Semantic underspecification is an essential and pervasive property of natural
language. This monograph provides a comprehensive survey of the various
phenomena in the field of ambiguity and vagueness. The book discusses the major
theories of semantic indefiniteness, which have been proposed in linguistics,
philosophy and computer science. It argues for a view of indefiniteness as the
potential for further contextual specification, and proposes a unified logical
treatment of indefiniteness on this basis. The inherent inconsistency of
natural language induced by irreducible imprecision is investigated, and
treated in terms of a dynamic extension of the proposed logic. The book is an
extended edition of a German monograph and is addressed to advanced students
and researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics, logic, philosophy
of language, and NL- oriented AI. Although it makes extensive use of logical
formalisms, it requires only some basic familiarity with standard predicate
logic concepts since all technical terms are carefully explained.
