The Evolution Of The Treatment Of Vagueness In Natural Language

Vagueness is a fundamental feature of natural language which has aroused attention particularly among linguists and philosophers. In ancient Greece, logicians and philosophers have tried to give an adequate explanation on it, and not until philosophy shifted its focus from ontology to linguistics, have the research on vagueness achieved much progress. This paper first gives a view back to the history of the exploration on vagueness, and then provides three different approaches to explore it: logic, pragmatic and epistemic. Logic approach treats vagueness in fuzzy logic; pragmatic approach treats it in the relation between language and language users; epistemic approach treats it in the interaction between world, language and people. Since the three approaches focus on different perspectives, each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages in exploring vagueness. Then we can have an overall view about the progress made on the research of vagueness and make a comparison between the three approaches. We may find that the epistemic approach is more reasonable, but to treat this matter better, we must combine all the useful approaches. Comparatively speaking, the epistemic approach is a new way to explore vagueness because it combines many sciences such as epistemology, linguistics and cognitive psychology. This approach is expected to have great potential in the exploration of vagueness. Only by this means, can we be more prepared to make further progress on the research of vagueness.