45823 - Logic (1) (2nd cycle)

Academic Year 2008/2009

  • Docente: Giovanna Corsi
  • Credits: 5
  • SSD: M-FIL/02
  • Language: Italian
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LS) in Philosophical Sciences (cod. 0462)

Learning outcomes

In the first part of the course students are introduced to formal reasoning, to propositional and first-order logic. These topics constitute a pre-requisite to deal, in the second part of the course, with problems related to the foundations of mathematics, intensional semantics, theories of language, proof theory.

Course contents

I part Formal languages, object language and metalanguage. Logical and extra-logical terms, logical form, logical consequence, consistency. Propositional logic: truth functions, tautologies. First-order languages: variables and quantifiers. Translation from natural language to first-order languages. Articles. Numerical quantifiers. Semantics for first-order languages. Generalized quantifiers (e.g. most, infinitely many, etc).

The first parte of the course will be online at the website http://www.moodle.unibo.it/course/category.php?id=23, "Le basi della logica on-line", so that students will be able to do exercises in an interactive form with the assistance of suitable software.


II part Grammars and automata. Automata accepting formal languages. Automata and finite languages. Regular languages. Context-free languages and context-sensitive languages. The Chomsky hierarchy. Lambek's grammars.

Readings/Bibliography

Dario Palladino, Corso di logica, Carocci, 2002
Generalized quantifiers at  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/generalized-quantifiers/
Martin D. Davis e Elaine J.Weyuker Computability Complexity and Languages, Academic Press 1983 (pp. 149- 230)

Teaching methods

Lectures ex-cathedra with projections from "Le basi della logica on-line".

Tutorials by dr Guido Gherardi will be arranged.

Assessment methods

A written test at the end of the first part and a brief essay concerning 3 topics discussed during the second part of the course.

Teaching tools


Standard tools: black-board and chalk, overhead projector, front projector for slides.

Links to further information

http://www.moodle.unibo.it/ oppure http://www.moodle.unibo.it/course/category.php?id=23

Office hours

See the website of Giovanna Corsi