Tarski's truth definition

Definition
Tarski's truth definition is a definition which formalizes the relation between a sentence and its truth value. The definition formalizes what Wittgenstein (1922) describes as: to understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true.

It has the following general form:

(i) For any S in L and any v, S is true in v if and only if p.

S is a structural description of a sentence of a language L, v is a circumstance which has to be met, and p are the conditions that describe how this circumstance should be met.

Example
The definition for sentence S in (i) has (partly) the form of (ii).

(ii) Snow is white is true iff Snow is white

Tarski's truth definition is crucial to a denotational meaning theory.

Links

 * Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics