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On Expressing Vague Quantification and Scalar Implicatures in the Logic of Partial Information

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3492))

Abstract

In this paper, we use the logic of partial information to re-examine some early analyses of vague quantifiers in French such as quelques,peu, beaucoup that are found in particular in the work of O. Ducrot [2]. Our approach is based on the paradigm offered by the logical formalization of the sorites paradox. We claim that this paradox offers a general scheme along which the argumentation structure of all vague quantifiers in French may be expressed. We offer a variational principle approximating Grice’s maxims in the case of vague quantification.

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References

  1. Chierchia, G., McConnell-Ginet, S.: Meaning and grammar. MIT Press, Cambridge (2001)

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  2. Ducrot, O.: Les échelles argumentatives. Editions de Minuit (1980)

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  3. Horn, L.: On the semantic properties of logical operators in English. PhD thesis (1972)

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  4. Abdallah, M.A.N.: The logic of partial information. In: EATCS Research Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg (1995)

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  5. Rajnovich, J.J.: Piilog: Partial information ionic logic programming. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario (2000)

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Abdallah, A.N., Lecomte, A. (2005). On Expressing Vague Quantification and Scalar Implicatures in the Logic of Partial Information. In: Blache, P., Stabler, E., Busquets, J., Moot, R. (eds) Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics. LACL 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3492. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11422532_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11422532_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25783-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31953-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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