Praise for Meaning and Argument
"Meaning and Argument is especially strong on the subtleties of translating
natural language into formal language, as a necessary step in the clarification
of expression and the evaluation of arguments. The range of natural language
constructions surveyed is broader and richer than in any competing
introductory logic text that I am aware of. As such, the book provides a solid
and attractive introduction to logic not only for philosophy students, but for
linguists as well."
Richard Larson, University Stony Brook
"I can thoroughly recommend Ernest Lepore's Meaning and Argument, particularly
for those seeking to teach or learn how to paraphrase into formal
symbolism, a much neglected aspect of logic. It contains a wealth of examples
and is informed throughout by a deep theoretical knowledge of contemporary
linguistics and philosophy of language."
Alan Weir, Queen's University Belfast
"Lepore's book is unusual for a beginning logic text in that it contains no
natural deduction proof system but rather concentrates on finding models and
countermodels by means of a semantic tableaux method. It is also unusual
in containing many translation examples that exemplify constructions that
linguists have found interesting in the last decades. In both of these ways the
book is well suited for use in educating philosophy students in the importance
of logic even when these students do not intend to go further in the study of
formal logic as a discipline."
Francis Jeffry Pelletier, University of Alberta
"Meaning and Argument is a beautiful display of both the power of first-order
logic and the complexity of natural language. The book focuses on the use of
logic to expose and remedy many difficulties with understanding a sentence's
exact meaning. Lepore's user-friendly style makes the book enjoyable for
beginning logic students, and his coverage of the details makes it useful for
advanced students and professionals. There is no logic textbook that comes
even remotely close to accomplishing what Meaning and Argument does."
Kent Johnson, University of California at Irvine
Author(s): Ernest Lepore & Sam Cumming
Edition: Second
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 448
City: West Sussex
Meaning and Argument
......Page 1
Contents......Page 7
Preface to Second Edition......Page 15
Preface to Revised Edition......Page 16
Acknowledgments......Page 17
Introduction......Page 21
1. A Brief Introduction to Key Terms......Page 25
2. Argument Forms and Propositional Logic......Page 37
3. Conjunction......Page 51
4. Negation......Page 62
5. Truth Tables......Page 76
6. Disjunction......Page 88
7. Conditionals......Page 99
8. Truth Trees......Page 129
9. Property Predicate Logic......Page 149
10. Evaluating Arguments in Property Predicate Logic......Page 175
11. Property Predicate Logic Refinements......Page 192
12. Relational Predicate Logic......Page 211
13. Relational Predicate Logic with Nested Quantifiers......Page 227
14. Extending the Truth Tree Method to RPL......Page 249
15. Negation, Only, and Restrictive Relative Clauses......Page 264
16. Relational Predicate Logic with Identity......Page 288
17. Verbs and their Modifiers......Page 314
A 1 Conjunction......Page 328
A2 Negation and Disjunction......Page 334
A3 Conditionals......Page 335
A4 Property Predicate Logic......Page 341
A5 Relational Predicate Logic......Page 349
A6 Relational Predicate Logic with Identity......Page 357
A7 Verbs and their Modifiers......Page 370
Answers for Selected Exercises......Page 376
Logical Symbols......Page 431
Index......Page 432
