Abstract

Two questions dominate theoretical research on vagueness. The first is of a logical-semantic nature: What formal models offer the best understanding of vagueness? Many answers to this question have been proposed (e.g. [1], [2] for an overview), but none of these has found general acceptance so far. The second question is of a pragmatic nature and asks Why is language vague? This question has been asked forcefully by the economist Barton Lipman, who has shown that some seemingly plausible answers resist analysis in terms of classical Game Theory [3], [4]. While a number of tentative answers to this question have been suggested (for a survey, see [6], [7]), Lipman’s question is still partly unresolved, particularly with respect to situations where there is no conflict between the speaker and the hearer (cf. [8])