Vague ness is a pervasive phenomenon in natural language , which appears to be instantiated in nearly all l exical categories (including adjectives, nouns, ve rbs, and quantifiers). In recent years, progress h as been made, both in philosophy and in linguistic s, to characterize the sources as well as the vari eties of vagueness. At the foundational level, a c entral debate concerns the epistemic vs. semantic nature of the vagueness phenomenon, and the proper understanding of the relation between the notions of\n vagueness, ambiguity, context-depende nce, and imprecision. In linguistic theory, some s ignificant advances have been made on the semantic s of gradable adjectives and on the role and behav ior of vagueness related adverbs (such as "cl early", "approximately", and " definitely").\n
\nThese adv ances raise the question of how empirical studies of language may bear on the debate about the natur e of vagueness, and whether they can help to adjud icate between competing accounts (epistemic vs. se mantic theories, contextualist vs. non-contextuali st accounts). In addition to that, a number of iss ues remain open for investigation: is vagueness ma nifested and resolved in the same way across lexic al categories (nouns vs. adjectives, logical vs. n on-logical expressions)? How is the vagueness of l exical items blocked or inherited in larger semant ic units (e.g. in comparative constructions), and what can this tell us about its nature? How do var ious theories explain the fact that\n we us e vague terms successfully to communicate meaning in spite of their vagueness? The aim of this confe rence will be to bring together linguists and phil osophers, with contributions on both the foundatio nal and the empirical aspects of the phenomenon of vagueness in natural language.\n
\n \ n\n \n For Conference Descrip tion and details of the CFP, see:\n http://paulegre.free.fr/Vagueness/in dex.html\n or\n contact vagueness.paris08 at gmail.com.\n
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