We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Utility and Language Generation: The Case of Vagueness.
- Authors
Deemter, Kees
- Abstract
This paper asks why information should ever be expressed vaguely, re-assessing some previously proposed answers to this question and suggesting some new ones. Particular attention is paid to the benefits that vague expressions can have in situations where agreement over the meaning of an expression cannot be taken for granted. A distinction between two different versions of the above-mentioned question is advocated. The first asks why human languages contain vague expressions, the second question asks when and why a speaker should choose a vague expression when communicating with a hearer. While the former question is purely theoretical, the latter has practical implications for the computational generation of utterances in Natural Language Generation (NLG).
- Subjects
LANGUAGE &; logic; PHILOSOPHY of language; MODERN logic; INTEREST (Psychology); EDUCATIONAL psychology
- Publication
Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2009, Vol 38, Issue 6, p607
- ISSN
0022-3611
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10992-009-9114-x