29345 - Logic (LM)

Academic Year 2009/2010

  • Docente: Giovanna Corsi
  • Credits: 12
  • SSD: M-FIL/02
  • Language: Italian
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Italian Studies, European Literary Cultures, Linguistics (cod. 0973)

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 First-order languages, in particular the language of set theory. Naive set theory. Principles of comprehension and extensionality. Operations on sets. Relations and functions. The axiom of choice. Definitions by abstraction and definitions by induction. Fixed points. Finite and infinite sets. The theorem of diagonalization by Cantor. Transfinite numbers. On the paradoxes of naive set theory. Discussion of the notion of existence in mathematics: Poincare', Russell, Brouwer.

II parte for the students of Corso in Italianistica, Culture Letterarie Europee, Scienze Linguistiche [12cfu]. 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.
II parte for the students of Corso Erasmus Mundus in Culture Letterarie Europee. The program is the same as that of the I part and the lectures will be in English.

Readings/Bibliography

Halmos P.R., Naive Set Theory, Springer, 1974.
Fraenkel A., Set Theory and Logic, Addison-Wesley, 1966.
Poincare' H., "La logique de l'infini' " in Gerhard Heinzmann (ed.) Poincare', Russell, Zermelo et Peano : textes de la discussion (1906-1912) Sur les fondements mathematiques : des antonomies a' la predicativite', A. Blanchard, 1986.

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/course/category.php?id=23

Office hours

See the website of Giovanna Corsi