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1 results

  • 13 - The Sorites Paradox in Linguistics

  • from Part II - The Influence of the Sorites Paradox
  • Edited by Sergi Oms, Universitat de Barcelona, Elia Zardini
  • Book:
    The Sorites Paradox
    Published online:
    20 September 2019
    Print publication:
    10 October 2019, pp 246-262

  • Summary

    This chapter outlines the impact of the Sorites Paradox in linguistics, with particular focus on its relation to semantic and pragmatic analyses of gradability and comparison. Section 2 describes the importance of philosophical work on vagueness and the Sorites Paradox for early attempts in linguistics to provide compositional analyses of the relation between positive and comparative adjectives. Section 3 then discusses subsequent linguistic analyses of these phenomena, and the extent to which they succeed or fail in providing isnights on vagueness and the Sorites Paradox. Section 4 explores the ways in which the Sorites Paradox has been used to uncover grammatically significant distinctions between classes of gradable predicates, and Section 5 concludes with a discussion of the connection between the Sorites Paradox and new lines of research geared towards understanding communication under semantic uncertainty.