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Sep 10, 2018 · In speech or writing, vagueness is the imprecise or unclear use of language. Contrast this term with clarity and specificity. As an adjective, the word becomes vague. Although vagueness often occurs unintentionally, it may also be employed as a deliberate rhetorical strategy to avoid dealing with an issue or responding directly to a question.
- Richard Nordquist
Vague and ambiguous words lead to the most common types of verbal disagreement. Vagueness refers to a lack of clarity in meaning. For example, Go down the road a ways and then turn right is vague because “a ways” does not precisely explain how far one should go down the road. Ambiguity is when there is more than one clear meaning, and it is ...
Jul 11, 2012 · In "Vagueness in Quantity: Two Case Studies from a Linguistic Perspective", Solt discusses the vague quantifiers many, few, much, and little, and contrasts most with more than half. These expressions have many of the features of typical vague predicates. Any account of vague predicates should be capable of extension to other vague terms.
The concept is seen to give rise to two main problems: the ‘soritic problem’ of finding a solution to the paradoxes of vagueness; and the ‘semantic problem’ of finding a satisfactory semantics and logic for vague language. It discusses three of the main attempts to deal with these problems – Supervaluationism, Degree theory, and ...
Feb 8, 1997 · Vagueness is standardly defined as the possession of borderline cases. For example, ‘tall’ is vague because a man who is 1.8 meters in height is neither clearly tall nor clearly non-tall. No amount of conceptual analysis or empirical investigation can settle whether a 1.8 meter man is tall.
May 7, 2021 · In many situations, the vagueness of vague terms does not become a problem because there are no borderline cases and no risk of running into Sorites series. In other words, the vague terms are only potentially vague (there are possible borderline cases) but not actually vague (there is no borderline case in the given situation).
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Dec 4, 2014 · Williamson argues that (under the hypothesis that vague terms have sharp boundaries) your knowledge of the boundaries of vague terms is similarly inexact. The thought is that vague terms are unstable: a small and imperceptible change in our use of the term “bald” would shift its boundary.
