Abstract
This paper addresses the question why language is vague. A novel answer to this question is proposed, which complements other answers suggested in the literature. It claims that vagueness can facilitate search, particularly in quasi-continuous domains (such as physical size, colour, or temperature), given that different speakers are likely to attach subtly different meanings to words (such as “tall”, “blue”, or “hot”) defined over such domains.
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van Deemter, K. (2010). Vagueness Facilitates Search. In: Aloni, M., Bastiaanse, H., de Jager, T., Schulz, K. (eds) Logic, Language and Meaning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6042. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_18
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