Joachim Lambek: The Interplay of Mathematics, Logic, and Linguistics
About this ebook
After early work in combinatorics and elementary number theory, Lambek became a distinguished algebraist (notably in ring theory). In the 1960s, he began to work in category theory, categorical algebra, logic, proof theory, and foundations of computability. In a parallel development, beginning in the late 1950s and for the rest of his career, Lambek also worked extensively in mathematical linguistics and computational approaches to natural languages. He and his collaborators perfected production and type grammars for numerous natural languages. Lambek grammars form an early noncommutative precursor to Girard’s linear logic. In a surprising development (2000), he introduced a novel and deeper algebraic framework (which he called pregroup grammars) for analyzing natural language, along with algebraic, higher category, and proof-theoretic semantics.
This book is of interest to mathematicians, logicians, linguists, and computer scientists.
About the author
Philip Scott is Emeritus Full Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa. His interests include categorical logic and algebra, proof theory, linear logic, and theoretical computer science. He is a senior editor of two major journals in these areas. He was a long-time collaborator of J. Lambek and the co-author of their well-known book Introduction to Higher Order Categorical Logic (1986).
