Taking linguistics students beyond the classical forms often taught in introductory courses, Language and Logics offers a comprehensive introduction to the wide variety of useful non-classical logics that are commonly used in research.
Including a brief review of classical logic and its major assumptions, this textbook provides a guided tour of modal, many valued and substructural logics. The textbook starts from simple and intuitive concepts, clearly explaining the logics of language for linguistics students who have little previous knowledge of logic or mathematics. Issues are presented and discussed clearly before going on to introduce symbolic notation.
While not avoiding technical detail, the book focuses throughout on helping students develop an intuitive understanding of the field, with particular attention to conceptual questions and to the tailoring of logical systems to thinking about different applications in linguistics and beyond. This is an ideal introductory volume for advanced undergraduates and beginning postgraduate students in linguistics, and for those specializing in semantics.
Industry Reviews
Language and Logics is probably the most comprehensive textbook in Logics and Linguistics to date. One of the many undoubted merits of the book is that the range of logical topics is wide enough to cover all a linguistic student needs to know about logic(s). This book takes the reader well beyond elementary logic... Presents a wealth of logical material in a clear way.--Christian Bassac, Universit? de Lyon2 "Cercles"
Logical methods in the study of language have tended to be the preserve of research level literature. In this book Howard Gregory opens the field to the interested student in a steady progression which is both precise and comprehensive, providing a valuable road-map to logical linguistics--Glyn Morrill, Universitat Polit?cnica de Catalunya
To sum up, this book is a suitable source for undergraduates (and not only in linguistics) to get a general picture about the field of modern non-classical logics, which can serve as a background for further more advanced readings. The last part of the book is the most relevant to the linguistic issues, handling such topics as substructural logics and categorical grammar. The chapter about combinatorial logic is of especial importance, since it in effect summaries and coordinates the material from the previous chapters.--Yaroslav Shramko, Kryvyi Rih "Zentralblatt Math"