Acceso usuarios
Filip Devos
The present paper focuses on vagueness as a less charted area of semantic analysis. The introductory paragraph outlines the problematic treatment of semantic vagueness in several disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, logic and linguistics, especially as to (1) the interpretation of vagueness; (2) the analysis of the phenomenon; and (3) the delineation of the notion in the literature. Next, two basic types of semantic vagueness are distinguished. The principal part of the paper focuses on the demarcation problem: it poses the question how vagueness functions amidst what has been called ‘vagaries of reference’, like homonymy, polysemy, metaphor, metonymy and generality. Finally, the (linguistic) treatment of semantic vagueness is revisited in view of the three problems described at the outset.
