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 Scholars have already studied hedges at home and abroad for a long time。 Many of them have already made a great contribution to this field。 Zadeh published his paper Fuzzy Sets to 1979 and made a research on the study of the quantitative analysis of the meaning of hedges as well as setting up the quantitative fuzzy semantics (Zadeh 487)。 Lakoff thinks that some words' aims is to make expressions more or less vague。 People can call this kind of words as the hedges such as "kind of '' and "sort of '' (Lakoff 195)。 Burns, L。C。who is an Australian linguist have made great contributions to the study of hedges。 He thinks that using hedges in human language is a natural phenomenon (Burns,L。C 26)。 While another linguist named Wallsten, he viewed hedges as a pragmatic matter。 On the basis of predecessors’ studies in pragmatics, Wallsten and his cooperators conducted a lot of researches on how to convey the information which gave voice to possibility。 The study of hedges of Joanna Channell's can be found in her book Vagueness。 Varieties of examples are cited in the form of members about hedges quantifiers and categories in her book。 And she also analyzed the origin and the nature of hedges and insisted that studying hedges have great theoretic significance in communicative functions。

Many Chinese scholars are also involved in this field of studying the hedges。 The first Person in China who introduced the theory of fuzzy set is Wu Tieping。 He published a book named "Discussion of Fuzzy Language" which is very famous and has a great effect to Chinese scholars。 He Ziran whose works basically focused on pragmatic hedges and the   interpersonal function of hedges。 He points out that the study of vagueness in language and that of the hedges is essentially the same proces (He hedges 27-32)。 Zhang Qiao believes that the indeterminacy of extension is the main reason of the fuzziness of words (Zhang 13-31)。 After Wu Tie ping and Zhang Qiao, the study of hedges has become popular and flourish in china。 Hedges have begun to attract more and more scholars' attention。 From this time on, Chinese linguists began to do some related researches, every year a lot of works and articles on the theory of hedges are published。

3。 The Definition and Classifications of Hedges

3。1 The definitions of hedges 论文网

What is hedge? It is a basic question that fuzzy linguists need answer at first。 It is properly normal that hedges are applied when people make a conversation with others。 However, different people have a variety of views and explanations of the phenomenon。 The experts have had a variety of views about hedges。 Lakoff is the first person that includes hedge into linguistic study。 And he made a definition of hedges in his article " Hedges: A study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts"。 In article he regarded hedges as that some of the most interesting questions are raised by the study of words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness, words which aims to make expressions indistinct and vague。 To these words, he would refer to as hedges (Lakoff 458-508)。 Chafe claims that hedges are expressions which show the match between some specific knowledge and the category less than perfect (Chafe 270)。 Brown and Levinson defines hedge as a particle, word or phrase which modifies the degree of membership of a noun or phrase in a set。 This membership is partial or true only under certain circumstance, or it is more true and complete than might be expected (Brown and Levinson 145)。 And it has become a frequently-quoted source or reference for studying the employment and functions of hedges under the framework of politeness strategies。 While Channell thinks that hedging refers to the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the truth by using the words and expressions (Channell 218)。 商务谈判中模糊限制语的语用功能(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_201265.html