Designed specifically for guided independent study. Features a wealth of worked examples and exercises, many with full teaching solutions, that encourage active participation in the development of the material. It focuses on core material and provides a solid foundation for further study.

This booklet presents a reasonably self-contained theory of predicate trans former semantics. Predicate transformers were introduced by one of us (EWD) as a means for defining programming language semantics in a way that would directly support the systematic development of programs from their formal specifications. They met their original goal, but as time went on and program derivation became a more and more formal activity, their informal introduction and the fact that many of their properties had never been proved became more and more unsatisfactory. And so did the original exclusion of unbounded nondeterminacy. In 1982 we started to remedy these shortcomings. This little monograph is a result of that work. A possible -and even likely- criticism is that anyone sufficiently versed in lattice theory can easily derive all of our results himself. That criticism would be correct but somewhat beside the point. The first remark is that the average book on lattice theory is several times fatter (and probably less self contained) than this booklet. The second remark is that the predicate transformer semantics provided only one of the reasons for going through the pains of publication.

Language in Action demonstrates the viability of mathematical research into the foundations of categorial grammar, a topic at the border between logic and linguistics. Since its initial publication it has become the classic work in the foundations of categorial grammar. A new introduction to this paperback edition updates the open research problems and records relevant results through pointers to the literature. Van Benthem presents the categorial processing of syntax and semantics as a central component in a more general dynamic logic of information flow, in tune with computational developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Using the paradigm of categorial grammar, he describes the substructural logics driving the dynamics of natural language syntax and semantics. This is a general type-theoretic approach that lends itself easily to proof-theoretic and semantic studies in tandem with standard logic. The emphasis is on a broad landscape of substructural categorial logics and their proof-theoretical and semantic peculiarities. This provides a systematic theory for natural language understanding, admitting of significant mathematical results. Moreover, the theory makes possible dynamic interpretations that view natural languages as programming formalisms for various cognitive activities.

The forms and scope of logic rest on assumptions of how language and reasoning connect to experience. In this volume an analysis of meaning and truth provides a foundation for studying modern propositional and predicate logics. Chapters on propositional logic, parsing propositions, and meaning, truth, and reference give a basis for criteria that can be used to judge formalizations of ordinary language arguments. Over 120 worked examples of formalizations of propositions and arguments illustrate the scope and limitations of modern logic, as analyzed in chapters on identity, quantifiers, descriptive names, functions, and second-order logic. The chapter on second-order logic illustrates how different conceptions of predicates and propositions do not lead to a common basis for quantification over predicates, as they do for quantification over things. Notable for its clarity of presentation, and supplemented by many exercises, this volume is suitable for philosophers, linguists, mathematicians, and computer scientists who wish to better understand the tools they use in formalizing reasoning.

Brimming with visual examples of concepts, derivation rules, and proof strategies, this introductory text is ideal for students with no previous experience in logic. Symbolic Logic: Syntax, Semantics, and Proof introduces students to the fundamental concepts, techniques, and topics involved in deductive reasoning. Agler guides students through the basics of symbolic logic by explaining the essentials of two classical systems, propositional and predicate logic. Students will learn translation both from formal language into English and from English into formal language; how to use truth trees and truth tables to test propositions for logical properties; and how to construct and strategically use derivation rules in proofs. This text makes this often confounding topic much more accessible with step-by-step example proofs, chapter glossaries of key terms, hundreds of homework problems and solutions for practice, and suggested further readings.

In writing this book, our goal was to produce a text suitable for a first course in mathematical logic more attuned than the traditional textbooks to the recent dramatic growth in the applications of logic to computer science. Thus our choice of topics has been heavily influenced by such applications. Of course, we cover the basic traditional topics - syntax, semantics, soundness, completeness and compactness - as well as a few more advanced results such as the theorems of Skolem-Lowenheim and Herbrand. Much of our book, however, deals with other less traditional topics. Resolution theorem proving plays a major role in our treatment of logic, especially in its application to Logic Programming and PROLOG. We deal extensively with the mathematical foundations of all three of these subjects. In addition, we include two chapters on nonclassical logic- modal and intuitionistic - that are becoming increasingly important in computer science. We develop the basic material on the syntax and se mantics (via Kripke frames) for each of these logics. In both cases, our approach to formal proofs, soundness and completeness uses modifications of the same tableau method introduced for classical logic. We indicate how it can easily be adapted to various other special types of modal log ics. A number of more advanced topics (including nonmonotonic logic) are also briefly introduced both in the nonclassical logic chapters and in the material on Logic Programming and PROLOG.