Representing the Adverb Very in Fuzzy Set Theory.
Martine De Cock · 1999
Abstract. We recall the concept of a linguistic variable and the representation of its values (i.e. linguistic terms) by means of fuzzy sets. In this framework adverbs are represented by fuzzy modifiers, i.e. operators acting on these fuzzy sets. We investigate two important classes of popular fuzzy modifiers. Grounding on results from psycholinguistic research, we discuss their pro’s and contra’s for representing the adverb very. 19.1 Linguistic variables 19.1.1 The concept of a linguistic variable The concept of a linguistic variable was introduced by Zadeh in the 70’s [ZAD1975]. While the values of a numerical variable (often used in classical mathematics, physics, economics,...) are numbers, the values of a linguistic variable are linguistic terms. E.g. the numerical variable size has values 5 cm2, 100 cm2,... while the linguistic variable Size has values large, small, very large, rather small, not very large and not small,.... The set consisting of all possible values of a linguistic variable is called the term set. Perhaps the most important computational beauty of the concept of a linguistic variable is the fact that the elements of its term set show a specific structure. Starting from one, two, or more base terms (e.g. large, small), every other term can be constructed using the following scheme: