Customer Reviews

Everything that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know about Logic . . . But Were Ashamed to Ask

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This book's intended audience is not merely linguists, but rather any student of symbolic logic (beyond classical Greek treatment of the topic) where that student wants to start with the gentle introduction from the top down rather than go straight to Bertrand-Russell-level theoretical monographs on set theory, logic, and combinatorics. Instead, McCawley presents logic not as some topic only for high-priest mathematicians, but rather as something that, given the opportunity, comes naturally as if our brains are pre-wired to learn logic as much as and as easily as riding a bicycle.

This book (as is all of McCawley's other books) is an immense joy to read. Although the title makes the material inside this book sound like `logic for poets', this book goes into fair depth across fair breadth. Portions of the material covered lucidly overlaps with Irving Copi's _Symbolic Logic_ but gentler. Portions apply logic to a kind of transformational grammar. Portions explore quantifiers that demarcate multiple worldviews. Portions explore the establishment of different categories of truth. And nearly every concept in this book is presented in a gentle and lucid style of writing, speaking simultaneously to multiple audiences, each at a different level of expertise among several domains. If you are seeking a 100-page tersely-dense mathematical monograph, perhaps this is not the book that you are seeking. But if you are seeking the comprehensive owner's manual that effectively says through its style of writing `Welcome to the Logic Club! We are glad that you could arrive and join us as a lifelong member.', then this is the book for you.

Recommended by Christopher 'Chris' J DATE. 'Nuff said. And a good reading too, as far as the naturally demanding topic allows.