On the optimality of vagueness: “around”, “between” and the Gricean maxims

Abstract Why is ordinary language vague? We argue that in contexts in which a cooperative speaker is not perfectly informed about the world, the use of vague expressions can offer an optimal tradeoff between truthfulness (Gricean Quality) and informativeness (Gricean Quantity). Focusi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Égré, Paul, Spector, Benjamin, Mortier, Adèle, Verheyen, Steven
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Netherlands 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152305

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