Vagueness in Communication

Vagueness in Communication PDF Author: Rick Nouwen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3642184464
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This book constitutes the proceedings of the International Workshop on Vagueness in Communication, VIC 2009, held as part of ESSLLI 2009, in Bordeaux, France, July 20-24, 2009. The 11 contributions presented shed a light on new aspects in the area of vagueness in natural language communication. In contrast to the classical instruments of dealing with vagueness - like multi-valued logics, truth value gaps or gluts, or supervaluations - this volume presents new approaches like context-sensitivity of vagueness, the sharpening of vague predicates in context, and the modeling of precision levels.

Vagueness in Communication

Vagueness in Communication PDF Author: Rick Nouwen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3642184464
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book constitutes the proceedings of the International Workshop on Vagueness in Communication, VIC 2009, held as part of ESSLLI 2009, in Bordeaux, France, July 20-24, 2009. The 11 contributions presented shed a light on new aspects in the area of vagueness in natural language communication. In contrast to the classical instruments of dealing with vagueness - like multi-valued logics, truth value gaps or gluts, or supervaluations - this volume presents new approaches like context-sensitivity of vagueness, the sharpening of vague predicates in context, and the modeling of precision levels.

Vagueness in Normative Texts

Vagueness in Normative Texts PDF Author: Vijay K. Bhatia
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039106530
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
Normative texts are meant to be highly impersonal and decontextualised, yet at the same time they also deal with a range of human behaviour that is difficult to predict, which means they have to have a very high degree of determinacy on the one hand, and all-inclusiveness on the other. This poses a dilemma for the writer and interpreter of normative texts. The author of such texts must be determinate and vague at the same time, depending upon to what extent he or she can predict every conceivable contingency that may arise in the application of what he or she writes. The papers in this volume discuss important legal and linguistic aspects relating to the use of vagueness in legal drafting and demonstrate why such aspects are critical to our understanding of the way normative texts function.

Vague Language

Vague Language PDF Author: Joanna Channell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This is a major descriptive study of linguistic vagueness. It argues that strategies for being vague constitute a key aspect of the communicative competence of the native speaker of English.

Vagueness in Psychiatry

Vagueness in Psychiatry PDF Author: Geert Keil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198722370
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in almost every publication concerned with the classification of mental disorders. Yet, systematic approaches that take into account discussions about vagueness are rare. This volume is the first in the psychiatry/philosophy literature to tackle this problem.

Not Exactly

Not Exactly PDF Author: Kees van Deemter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199645736
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Our lives are full of inexactitude. We say a person is tall or an action is just without the precision of measurement on a dial. In this engaging account, Kees van Deemter explores vagueness, cutting across areas such as language, mathematical logic, and computing. He considers why vagueness is inherent, and why it is important in how we function.

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives PDF Author: Claudia Maienborn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311062639X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Discover vital research on the lexical and cognitive meanings of words. In this exciting book from a team of world-class researchers, in-depth articles explain a wide range of topics, including thematic roles, sense relation, ambiguity and comparison. The authors focus on the cognitive and conceptual structure of words and their meaning extensions such as coercion, metaphors and metonymies. The book features highly cited material – available in paperback for the first time since its publication – and is an essential starting point for anyone interested in lexical semantics, especially where it meets other cognitive and conceptual research.

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law PDF Author: Hrafn Asgeirsson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509904441
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Lawmaking is – paradigmatically – a type of speech act: people make law by saying things. It is natural to think, therefore, that the content of the law is determined by what lawmakers communicate. However, what they communicate is sometimes vague and, even when it is clear, the content itself is sometimes vague. This monograph examines the nature and consequences of these two linguistic sources of indeterminacy in the law. The aim is to give plausible answers to three related questions: In virtue of what is the law vague? What might be good about vague law? How should courts resolve cases of vagueness? It argues that vagueness in the law is sometimes a good thing, although its value should not be overestimated. It also proposes a strategy for resolving borderline cases, arguing that textualism and intentionalism – two leading theories of legal interpretation – often complement rather than compete with each other.

Vagueness

Vagueness PDF Author: Timothy Williamson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134770189
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
If you keep removing single grains of sand from a heap, when is it no longer a heap? From discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece, to modern formal approaches like fuzzy logic, Timothy Williamson traces the history of the problem of vagueness. He argues that standard logic and formal semantics apply even to vague languages and defends the controversial, realist view that vagueness is a form of ignorance - there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we can never know exactly which one it is.

Modelling and Reasoning with Vague Concepts

Modelling and Reasoning with Vague Concepts PDF Author: Jonathan Lawry
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 038730262X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This volume introduces a formal representation framework for modelling and reasoning, that allows us to quantify the uncertainty inherent in the use of vague descriptions to convey information between intelligent agents. This can then be applied across a range of applications areas in automated reasoning and learning. The utility of the framework is demonstrated by applying it to problems in data analysis where the aim is to infer effective and informative models expressed as logical rules and relations involving vague concept descriptions. The author also introduces a number of learning algorithms within the framework that can be used for both classification and prediction (regression) problems. It is shown how models of this kind can be fused with qualitative background knowledge such as that provided by domain experts. The proposed algorithms will be compared with existing learning methods on a range of benchmark databases such as those from the UCI repository.

Vagueness and Degrees of Truth

Vagueness and Degrees of Truth PDF Author: Nicholas J. J. Smith
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191552712
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
In Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, Nicholas Smith develops a new theory of vagueness: fuzzy plurivaluationism. A predicate is said to be vague if there is no sharply defined boundary between the things to which it applies and the things to which it does not apply. For example, 'heavy' is vague in a way that 'weighs over 20 kilograms' is not. A great many predicates - both in everyday talk, and in a wide array of theoretical vocabularies, from law to psychology to engineering - are vague. Smith argues, on the basis of a detailed account of the defining features of vagueness, that an accurate theory of vagueness must involve the idea that truth comes in degrees. The core idea of degrees of truth is that while some sentences are true and some are false, others possess intermediate truth values: they are truer than the false sentences, but not as true as the true ones. Degree-theoretic treatments of vagueness have been proposed in the past, but all have encountered significant objections. In light of these, Smith develops a new type of degree theory. Its innovations include a definition of logical consequence that allows the derivation of a classical consequence relation from the degree-theoretic semantics, a unified account of degrees of truth and subjective probabilities, and the incorporation of semantic indeterminacy - the view that vague statements need not have unique meanings - into the degree-theoretic framework. As well as being essential reading for those working on vagueness, Smith's book provides an excellent entry-point for newcomers to the era - both from elsewhere in philosophy, and from computer science, logic and engineering. It contains a thorough introduction to existing theories of vagueness and to the requisite logical background.