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Logical analysis of natural language. (Logická analýza přirozeného jazyka.) (Czech) Zbl 0814.03021
Cesta k Vědění. 44. Praha: Academia. 144 p. Kčs 18.00 (1989).
The book presents results of conscious search for the most adequate logic system for analysis of natural language and its semantics. It is self- contained demanding no special prerequisites from the reader. The expositon of its material is divided into 4 chapters. The first two chapters review the present state of the art, while the remaining ones present a new methodology and its applications.
The first chapter, “Introduction”, distinguishes different phases which have to be accomplished when analyzing text in natural language. The second chapter, “First-order predicate logic”, introduces the language of classical FOL. It summarizes all the well-known arguments pointing to the drawbacks of FOL, namely to limited expressiveness of FOL and to the problems of its extensionality.
The third chapter, “Transparent Intensional Logic” (TIL), explains principles of a promising logical system [P. Tichý, Linguist. Philos. 3, 343-369 (1980; Zbl 0433.03005), “The semantics of episodic verbs”, Theor. Linguist. 7, 263-296 (1980), The foundations of Frege’s logic (1988; Zbl 0671.03001)] based on typed $$\lambda$$-calculus. The authors systematically show that TIL is able to treat different linguistic phenomena causing problems in FOL. This is the case with presuppositions, oblique contexts, desambiguation, questions, imperatives, egocentric expressions, counterfactuals and time, for example.
The last chapter, “Applications of TIL in the theory of information systems”, points to some interesting parallels between TIL and Ullman’s relational data model.
##### MSC:
 03B65 Logic of natural languages 03-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations 03-01 Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations 03B40 Combinatory logic and lambda calculus 68P99 Theory of data