Vagueness, Approximation, and Granularity (VAAG)

模糊性、近似性和粒度 (VAAG)

• 批准号: 72293203
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Uli Sauerland
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2007-12-31 至 2012-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/72293203?language=en
• 关键词: Vagueness; Approximation; Granularity; VAAG

Vagueness is a pervasive property of human language and cognition that is important for all fields of research that make use of symbolic representations. Approximation refers mechanisms that regulate vagueness in meaning composition, and granularity to mechanisms that divide meaning spaces. While vagueness has often been regarded as undesirable, the VAAG project is based on a growing recognition that vagueness is actually in many respects useful. VAAG targets a broad, interdisciplinary reassessment of vagueness with contributions to general cognitive science, linguistic semantics, experimental psychology, formal pragmatics and computer science. An appropriate theory of vagueness for these uses must not only explain how vagueness is represented, but also why it exists, what its uses are, and how it is constrained sentence internally and within discourse. Three central themes of the VAAG-project are the following: a) the relation of vagueness and cognitive efficiency, b) vagueness, granularity and the compositionality of meaning, and c) the distinction between different kinds of vagueness. The first theme addresses the question why vagueness is useful. We explore the intuition that vagueness can be useful in scenario where precise information can provide too much information. The second theme concerns approximation which regulates vagueness either through explicit markers like \emph{exactly} or as a general side-effect of concept combination. The third theme connects to both of the other themes since different motivation of vagueness seem to lead to types of vagueness, and these require different types of approximation strategies. In this way, the VAAG project targets a central issue for models of intelligent interaction using a broad multi-disciplinary perspective.

模糊性是人类语言和认知的普遍特征，对所有使用符号表征的研究领域都很重要。近似指的是调节意义构成中模糊性的机制，而粒度指的是划分意义空间的机制。虽然模糊常常被认为是不受欢迎的，但Vaag项目是基于越来越多的人认识到模糊实际上在许多方面是有用的。VAAG的目标是对模糊性进行广泛的、跨学科的重新评估，对一般认知科学、语言语义学、实验心理学、形式语用学和计算机科学做出了贡献。一个适用于这些用途的模糊理论不仅必须解释模糊是如何表现的，而且还必须解释它为什么存在，它的用途是什么，以及它是如何在句子内部和语篇中受到约束的。Vaag项目的三个中心主题如下：a)模糊与认知效率的关系，b)意义的模糊性、粒度和组合性，c)不同类型的模糊之间的区别。第一个主题解决了为什么模糊有用的问题。我们探索了这样一种直觉，即在精确信息可能提供太多信息的情况下，模糊可能是有用的。第二个主题是近似性，它通过显性的标记物如\emph{精确}来调节模糊性，或者作为概念组合的一般副作用。第三个主题与其他两个主题有关，因为不同的模糊动机似乎会导致不同类型的模糊，而这些类型需要不同类型的近似策略。通过这种方式，VAAG项目针对的是使用广泛的多学科视角的智能交互模型的中心问题。