Sorites Paradox: a semantic reflection about vagueness

• Autor(a) principal: Behle, Nanashara Fagundes
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: letrônica
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/letronica/article/view/32479
• topic: Sorites. Vagueness. Semantics.; Sorites. Vagueza. Semântica.

We use vague words and expressions without perceiving or causing strangeness in our interlocutors in everyday language. They are vague predicates, in which the property of being vague may not be so explicit. These predicates are uncertain cases or cases with the semantic boundary make difficult to clarify the extension of the predicate itself. Vagueness is assessed in both logic and linguistics studies. In logic, this type of predicate enables the development of the so-called Sorites paradox, whose argument can be constructed by chaining the premises or by mathematical induction. We use in this paper a philosophical study of vagueness and Sorites paradox (PETRILLO, 2005) and also a linguistic study, in semantics based on truth conditions (CHIERCHIA; MCCONNELL-GINET, 1990), to reflect about the way vagueness is treated in language.