ABSTRACT
Term that is complementary to ambiguity: whereas ambiguity refers to ambiguousness which in the framework of grammatical models is represented through multiple descriptions, vagueness in the sense of ‘pragmatic indeterminacy’ is predictable, but not the object of internal linguistic representation. An expression is pragmatically vague with respect to certain semantic features which it leaves unspecified; e.g. person is not specified with reference to the features [male] vs [female], [old] vs [young].
