Sorites Paradox: a semantic reflection about vagueness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2019.2.32479Keywords:
Sorites. Vagueness. Semantics.Abstract
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.
Downloads
References
BACH, Emmon. Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics. New York: State University of New York, 1989.
BEHLE, Nanashara. Paradoxos: inferências semânticas e implicaturas pragmáticas. 2014. Dissertação (Mestrado em Letras) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 2014.
BEHLE, Nanashara. Os fenômenos da contradição e dos paradoxos: uma avaliação de teorias e de estudos da Pragmática Inferencial. 2019. Tese (Doutorado em Letras) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 2019.
CANÇADO, Márcia. Manual de semântica. São Paulo: Contexto, 2012.
CHIERCHIA, Gennaro; MCCONNELL-GINET, Sally. Meaning and grammar: an introduction to Semantics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.
DUMMETT, Michael. Wang’s paradox. In: DUMMETT, Michael. Truth and other enigmas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. p. 248-269.
GRICE, Paul Herbert. Lógica e conversação. In: DASCAL, M. (org.). Fundamentos metodológicos da lingüística. São Paulo: Global, 1982.
HYDE, Dominic; RAFFMAN, Diana. Sorites paradox. In: ZALTA, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford: The Metaphysics Research Lab, 2018.
Disponível em: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/soritesparadox/.
Acesso em: 18 jun. 2019.
ILARI, Rodolfo. Introdução à semântica: brincando com a gramática. São Paulo: Contexto, 2001.
KEMPSON, Ruth M. Teoria semântica. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1980.
OLIN, Doris. Paradox. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
PETRILLO, Paulo Roberto. Raciocínio difuso via lógicas moduladas: uma solução ao paradoxo do Sorites. 2005. Dissertação (Mestrado em Filosofia) – Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, 2005.
Disponível em: http://www.repositorio.unicamp.br/bitstream/REPOSIP/281574/1/Petrillo_PauloRoberto_M.pdf. Acesso em: 18 jun. 2019.
RESCHER, Nicholas. Paradoxes: their roots, range and resolution. Chicago: Open Court, 2001.
SPERBER, Dan; WILSON, Deirdre. Relevance: communication and cognition. 2. ed. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
The submission of originals to Letrônica implies the transfer by the authors of the right for publication. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. If the authors wish to include the same data into another publication, they must cite Letrônica as the site of original publication.
Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise specified, material published in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is correctly cited.
