Fuzzy quantifiers. A computational theory (Q818040)

The author is interested to model natural language quantification. Vagueness of the quantification, as well as vaguenes of the quantified predicates, is an intrinsic phenomenon in natural languages. The author models this vagueness via reference to fuzzy set techniques: therefore he speaks of ``fuzzy quantifiers''. The book starts with a broad critical survey (of 53 pp.) of the existing approaches toward fuzzy quantifiers, explains their (few) advantages and their (numerous) deficiencies. Then the author's position is that one should take a more linguistic turn. So he starts from the theory of generalized quantifiers as developed out of the approach by \textit{J. Barwise} and \textit{R. Cooper} [Linguist. Philos. 4, 159--219 (1981; Zbl 0473.03033)] and discusses a series of approaches how to define fuzzy models for natural language quantifiers of quite different sorts. The approach is structurally oriented and offers a clear presentation. Each chapter has an extended motivating introduction and an equally extended summary. Unfortunately, for the results (all of them coined ``theorem'') the author does never give proofs. This is occasionally okay if the result is more or less obvious, but a distinction is completely missing which ``theorems'' are obvious corollaries and which ones are non-trivial results. And the matter becomes even worse as the author mentions that some of the proofs are (only) available in technical reports and can be downloaded from some web account: this is complete nonsense for anybody who will start to read the book in, say, three decades.