Richard Martin (1916-85) is a seriously undervalued American philosopher. He was a superbly clear writer, better even than Quine. He was a fan of C S Peirce and of Peirce's semiotic theory. If there is such a thing as a turgid or gloomy Peircian, I have yet to discover such.

This book is in two parts. The first is a text on logic as seen through Richard Martin's eyes. It alone makes this book worth the price. In his 1941 Yale PhD, Martin discovered the theory of virtual sets and relations. The discussion of this theory in chpts. 1&2 is the best there is. (Quine discovered this theory independently while writing up his 1942 Brazil lectures, but never truly did it justice.) This is followed by an introduction to mereology, a vastly undervalued mathematical theory of the part-whole relation. Martin goes on to develop an event logic, and a theory of semantics (only Carnap himself can rival Martin as a master of formal semantics). Martin sketches out his ideas can be used to ground mathematics as well as linguistics. The result is a brilliant introduction to a number of issues in philosophical logic. Metatheory is not touched on, but arguably that theory is the crowning glory of mathematical logic.

Part II uses the logic of part I to develop a formal theory of linguistics. Martin had been a Penn colleague of Zelig Harris. Chomsky studied under Harris and may have learned some or most of his logic from Martin. Part II is one of the few places you'll see Harris's theories discussed. The mathematical treatment of the preposition is especially intriguing. Martin believed that language and formal logic were more closely related than is generally believed, and this book makes a good case for this.