Vagueness
- Though vague phenomena have been studied extensively for many decades, it is only in recent years that researchers sought the support of quantitative data. This chapter highlights and discusses the insights that experimental methods brought to the study of vagueness. One area focused on are ‘borderline contradictions’, that is, sentences like ‘She is neither tall nor not tall’ that are contradictory when analysed in classical logic, but are actually acceptable as descriptions of borderline cases. The flourishing of theories and experimental studies that borderline contradictions have led to are examined closely. Beyond this illustrative case, an overview of recent studies that concern the classification of types of vagueness, the use of numbers, rounding, number modification, and the general pragmatic status of vagueness is provided.
Author details: | Sam Alxatib, Ulrich SauerlandORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198791768.013.24 |
Title of parent work (English): | The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Place of publishing: | Oxford |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2019 |
Publication year: | 2019 |
Release date: | 2021/04/14 |
Tag: | borderline cases; categories; contradiction; gradability; hysteresis; imprecision; pragmatics; semantics; vagueness; valency |
Number of pages: | 28 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |