Vagueness facilitates search

  • Authors:

  • Kees van Deemter

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Aberdeen

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 17th Amsterdam colloquium conference on Logic, language and meaning
  • Year:
  • 2009

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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.