Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2017-04-04T13:24:35Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissert_Rebeca-BC.pdf: 1676162 bytes, checksum: dab8e79760f6e9b38c605146c9091b72 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-04T13:24:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissert_Rebeca-BC.pdf: 1676162 bytes, checksum: dab8e79760f6e9b38c605146c9091b72 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-07 / CAPES / Essa dissertação tem como objetivo analisar o funcionamento dos Processos Verbais dizer e afirmar e seus Participantes, bem como as Modalidades que se apresentam atreladas a esses Processos, em dissertações de Linguística, defendidas no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras da UFPE (PPGL-UFPE) no período de 1985 a 2004. Pretende-se entender como esses Processos contribuem para a argumentação característica desse gênero acadêmico. Para chegar a esse fim, recolheu-se essas dissertações do website do Projeto Letras Digitais, e, em seguida, aplicou-se o software Wordsmith Tools que, através da ferramenta Concord, forneceu uma listagem com todas as ocorrências dos Processos dizer e afirmar. Essas ocorrências, com foco naquele que diz e naquilo que é dito, foram analisadas e classificadas de acordo com seu padrão léxico-gramatical: tipos de Dizente (Participante 1), tipo de Locução (Participante 2). Para fundamentar as análises, apoiou-se na Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional (LSF) e em sua concepção da língua como semiótica social. Dessa teoria, por ter-se como foco estudar os Processos Verbais e suas Modalidades, deteve-se no Sistema de Transitividade (Metafunção Ideacional) e no Sistema de Modalidade (Metafunção Interpessoal). Para a LSF, o Sistema de Transitividade é a categoria léxico-gramatical que representa as ideias de nossas experiências humanas, codificados em um conjunto de diferentes tipos de orações, com diferentes modos de transitividades, como é o caso dos Processos Verbais, os quais são responsáveis pela introdução de um dizer, mediante a associação com três Participantes: dois obrigatórios – Dizente e Verbiagem/Locução; e um opcional – o Receptor. Já o Sistema de Modalidade corresponde aos diferentes graus de certeza que pode compor uma oração e pode apresentarse de duas maneiras: Modalização e Modulação. Os resultados obtidos revelaram a predominância do Processo dizer, em relação ao Processo afirmar, o que permitiu interpretar esse fato como aproximação da oralidade, o que foge ao prescrito para os gêneros acadêmicos. Nossos dados também apontaram que os Dizentes são codificados de quatro maneiras distintas: Grupo Nominal (GN); Grupo Pronominal (GP); Grupo Desinencial (GD) e Sujeito Indeterminado (SI). Dentre esses, foi predominante a presença dos GN, trazendo para o texto vozes de autoridade e de outros discursos alheios em Discurso Direto e em Discurso Indireto; esses último bem mais recorrentes. Nos demais tipos de Dizentes, ressalta-se a presença dos autores, em Discurso Indireto, trazendo seus próprios dizeres, ldenominados de ditos do mestrando. Muitos desses ditos, quando apresentado, são seguidos de Modalidade, atenuando, assim, o que é dito pelos próprios autores. Nossas análises nos levaram a concluir que os Processos Verbais são fundamentais para o desenvolvimento da argumentação pretendida em cada texto, uma vez que permite a circulação de diferentes dizeres, e, dessa forma, garantem a participação de vozes de autoridade que ratificam e fundamentam a defesa de um conteúdo ou de um ponto de vista, além de permitirem que os mestrandos apresentem os seus próprios ditos, posicionando-se, reafirmando, comentando, concluindo, enfim, construindo seu saber sobre o assunto estudado. Esses Processos, ou as orações por eles organizadas são, portanto, de relevância impar na constituição do gênero dissertação. / This dissertation aims to analyze the functioning of Verbal Process to say and to affirm and theirs Participants, as well Modalities, that is using connected to this Process in Linguistics dissertations, publish by Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras of UFPE (PPGL-UFPE), between 1985 and 2004. The intention with this study is to understand how these Processes contribute to argumentation that is a characteristic of this academic genre. For that purpose, these dissertations was took on website of Projeto Letras Digitais, thus; was applied the software Wordsmith Tools and through his tool Concord, was get a list of occurrences of Processes to say and to affirm. With focus on who says and what is said, these occurrences were analyzed and classified according to theirs lexicogrammar settings: types of Sayer (Participant 1), types of Locution (Participant 2). To fundament that analyses, Systemic Functional Linguistics (LSF) and its idea of language as social semiotic was adopted. Of this theory, were focused on System of Transitivity (Ideational Metafunction) and on System of Modality (Interpersonal Metafunction), for have as objective study Verbal Processes and their Modality. For LSF, the System of Transitivity is a lexicogrammar category that represents ideas of our humans experience with different ways of transitivity, as Verbal Process, these are responsible for introduce a saying, associated with three Participants: two obligatory – Sayer, Verbiage/Locution – and Receiver. The System of Modality corresponds to different levels of sureness in a clause and it can be presented in two forms: Modalization and Modulation. The results obtained demonstrate a predominance of Process to say, in relation with Process to affirm, it makes to understand this fact as an approximation of orality, different of prescribed to academics genres. Our results appointed too that Sayer is encoded in four manner: Grupo Nominal (GN); Grupo Pronominal (GP); Grupo Desinencial (GD) e Sujeito Indeterminado (SI). The GN was predominating; bring to the text authority voices and others unrelated speech in direct speech and indirect speech, theses more recurrent. The others types of Sayer was used with authors’ voice, in indirect speech. These were denominated ditos do mestrando. These Sayers occur in many parts of dissertation and contribute with argumentation in the text. Many of ditos do mestrando was used with Modality, attenuating what is said by dissertation’ authors. Our analyses help us to conclude that Verbal Processes are important to developing of the pretending argumentation in each text, because they permit a presence of different voices. In this way, they ensure the participation of authority’ voices that confirm and found a defense and a point of view, in addition to permit that Master students show his owns voices, positioning himself, reaffirming himself, commenting, concluding, at all, construing his knowledge about a subject studied. These Process, or clauses organized by them, are, than, of unpaired relevance in constitution of genre dissertatio

FundaÃÃo Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e TecnolÃgico / Este trabalho visa caracterizar formal, semÃntica e pragmaticamente as construÃÃes passivas, mÃdias e impessoais, com o fim de elucidar a natureza da relaÃÃo entre estas construÃÃes, no portuguÃs arcaico, relaÃÃo essa observada em trabalhos, como os de Camacho (2002, 2003, 2006), para o portuguÃs atual. Parte do princÃpio de que o traÃo comum a essas construÃÃes à a nÃo-atribuiÃÃo de causalidade, e de que estas construÃÃes refletem diferentes conceitualizaÃÃes de um evento. Com base nesses princÃpios, analisa, numa abordagem cognitivo-funcional (GIVÃN, 1993, 1995, 2002, 2005; KEMMER, 1993; CAMACHO, 2002, 2003; HOPPER & THOMPSON, 1980; POTTIER, 1992; CROFT, 1994, 1998; LANGACKER, 1987, 1991; DELANCEY, 1987; TALMY, 1988, 2000; LAKOFF, 1977), a codificaÃÃo da funÃÃo nÃo-atribuiÃÃo de causalidade na CrÃnica Geral da Espanha de 1344, prosa histÃrica representante do portuguÃs arcaico, editada por Cintra (1951). Nessa anÃlise, busca respostas para os seguintes problemas: (a) dos recursos verbais disponÃveis, no corpus analisado, para a expressÃo da nÃo-atribuiÃÃo de causalidade, qual a mais e a menos prototÃpica? (b) que traÃos semÃntico-pragmÃticos e formais caracterizam as diferentes estratÃgias? A hipÃtese central considera que as construÃÃes analisadas codificam a nÃo-atribuiÃÃo da causalidade em variados graus, conforme fatores ligados à noÃÃo de causalidade e à transitividade, como a perspectivaÃÃo e a saliÃncia. Foram coletadas 1061 ocorrÃncias e analisadas quanto a fatores pragmÃticos, como a topicalidade e o estatuto informacional; fatores semÃnticos, como saliÃncia cognitiva do Afetado e do Causativo, traÃo [animado], tipo de afetaÃÃo; e fatores formais, como a ordem e a expressÃo. AlÃm disso, todas foram graduadas quanto ao grau de transitividade e de relevo discursivo. Os resultados apontaram que a mÃdia à a mais prototÃpica das construÃÃes de nÃo-atribuiÃÃo de causalidade, por ser a que apresenta causativo menos saliente e menor grau de transitividade. A passiva, mais freqÃente no corpus e, muitas vezes, com Causativo omitido, caracterizou-se como menos prototÃpica por seu Causativo ser freqÃentemente evocado e apresentar maior grau de transitividade. Do mesmo modo, a impessoal, cujo causativo à freqÃentemente inferÃvel, manifestou-se como mais causativa e mais transitiva que a mÃdia, todavia menos que a passiva. A anÃlise demonstrou, enfim, que o fenÃmeno da nÃo-atribuiÃÃo de causalidade nÃo à um fenÃmeno isolado, limitado à manifestaÃÃo ou nÃo de um Agente. Submete-se a graus e acha-se ligado, especialmente, ao contorno tÃmporo-aspectual do evento. Devido à noÃÃo experiencial de causalidade, ligada à idÃia de movimento, eventos perfectivos sÃo mais causais que eventos imperfectivos. / This work aims to characterize formally, semantically and pragmatically the passive, middle and impersonal constructions, in order to elucidate the nature of relation between these constructions in a archaic Portuguese, a relation observed in researches, such as those of Camacho (2002, 2003, 2006), in modern Portuguese. The present research, thus, claims that the common feature of these constructions is the non-attribution of causality, and that they represent different event conceptualizations. Based on principles, founded on a cognitive-functional approach (GIVÃN, 1993, 1995, 2002, 2005; KEMMER, 1993; CAMACHO, 2002, 2003, 2006; HOPPER & THOMPSON, 1980; POTTIER, 1992; CROFT, 1994, 1998; LANGACKER, 1987, 1991; DELANCEY, 1987; TALMY, 1988, 2000; LAKOFF, 1977), the codification of the non-attribution of causality is analyzed in CrÃnica Geral de Espanha de 1344, a representative historical text in archaic Portuguese, edited by Cintra (1951). In this analysis, answers are sought for the following questions: (a) in the analyzed corpus, which is the most and the least prototypical verbal recourses available for the expression of the non-attribution of causality? (b) which semantic, pragmatical and formal features characterize the different strategies used for expressing the non-attribution of causality? The central hypothesis considers that analyzed constructions codify the non-attribution of causality at various degrees, according to aspects related to the causality notion, such as perspectivization and salience. A large number of occurrences (1061, in total) were collected and analyzed from the perspective of pragmatical aspects such as topicality and informational status; semantic aspects, such as cognitive salience of Affected and of Causative, animacy, affectation type; and formal aspects, such as order and expression. Moreover, all of such occurrences were graduated regarding the transitivity degree and the Grounding. The results indicate that middle construction is the most prototypical of the non-attribution of causality constructions, because it presents less salient causative and is posited in the least degree of transitivity. Passive, most frequent in the corpus and, often, with omitted causative, was characterized as the least prototypical construction because its causative is commonly evoked and it presents a higher degree of transitivity. Impersonal construction, whose causative is frequently inferable, was characterized as more causative and more transitive than the middle construction, however, less than passive. Therefore, the analyses demonstrated that non-attribution of causality is not an isolated phenomenon, limited to the manifestation of an Agent. It is subject to degrees of escalarization which is attached to temporal and aspectual event contours. Because of experiential notion of causality, linked to the idea movement, perfective events are more causal than imperfective ones.

Masters of Art / This thesis examines how two narrators construe their experiences of the same events differently through the linguistic choices that they make, through a systemic functional analysis, as well as a genre analysis of two testimonies. The Human Rights Violations (HRV) hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) allowed testifiers to tell stories of their experiences during apartheid. The selected testimonies refer to the events that led up to the arrest and eventual torture of Faried Muhammad Ferhelst, as told by himself and his mother, Minnie Louisa Ferhelst. Theframeworks used to analyse the testimonies are drawn from the transitivity and genre theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics. A clausal analysis of the transitivity patterns is used to compare the ways in which the testifiers construct their identities and roles when recounting their stories. The transitivity analysis of both testimonies shows that both Mrs Ferhelst and Faried Ferhelst construe themselves as the Affected participant through Material, Mental and Verbal clauses, and construe the police as the Causers, mostly through Material clauses. A genre analysis revealed that both testimonies took the form of narratives, in particular the Recount, a typical genre for relating narratives of personal experience. This research project also explores how the original Afrikaans versions of the testimonies differ from the translated English versions, available online on the TRC website. The Afrikaans versions were transcribed by the researcher from audio-visual records. A transitivity analysis reveals that the interpretation of the Afrikaans testimonies is fairly accurate, with a minimum loss of meaning. Thus in the case of these testimonies, the actual online record in English is an accurate reflection of their stories. / South Africa

The global society of today is characterised by global communications, expansive networks and uninterrupted movement of information and people. This study sets out to investigate psycho-geographic liminality, understood as a state of perpetual movement, through the work of selected contemporary South African artists. This liminality is situated between an identity denoted on one hand by fragmentation and fluid change, as a result of transitivity, and on the other hand by a sense of place, which sets up two psychological states, namely displacement and belonging. Transitivity is explored in relation to conditions of post-colonialisation, immigration, emigration and telecommunications within the context of globalisation and is considered in direct in contrast to the concept of place as a physical house, suburb, city or country where one feels 'at home,' denoting a sense of belonging. Through the investigation of relevant theories in sociology, anthropology and philosophy this study proposes that we are in perpetual transit, being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, therefore requiring a new understanding of belonging rooted in a continual flow. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

I “Det finns även personer som...”: En transitivitetsanalys av trans*personer i text undersöks tre olika texter. Texterna är från riksdagen, Regeringen och Socialstyrelsen och alla handlar om eller riktar sig till trans*personer i olika utsträckning. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur trans*personer skrivs om eller till i texter som kommer från inflytelserika myndigheter och samhällsinstanser. Med utgångspunkt ur den systemisk-funktionella grammatiken samt intersektionella perspektiv på diskriminering görs en transitivitetsanalys som kombineras med den analytiska modellen genderism. Resultaten visar att det grundläggande verkar vara svårt att alls skriva om eller till trans*personer, men att texterna utvecklar ett antal olika metoder för att ändå försöka göra detta. Det sker ofta genom att antingen abstrahera med långa komplicerade omskrivningar, eller försöka hålla ett direkt ’du’-tilltal. Det är tydligt att författarna försöker undvika problematiska kategoriseringar, men det visar sig riskera att leda till bortnämningar istället. Det visade sig också finnas en intressant tendens att både gå emot och samtidigt bekräfta och cementera en cisnormativitet. Den här kandidatuppsatsen skrevs vårterminen 2020 av Jack Ohlson. Handledare var Ulf Larsson.

Cette thèse étudie le schéma de complémentation capacitif, présent dans les occurrence suivantes : The tent sleeps four ; The bench seats two. Il attribue au référent du sujet une capacité d’accueil quantifiée. Dans cette structure, l’alignement entre fonction syntaxique et rôle sémantique n’est pas canonique. Le sujet a un rôle de localisation et le complément post-verbal de mesure a un rôle agentif, habituellement rempli par le sujet. La modification de cet alignement prototypique permet de signifier la capacité sans avoir recours à un marqueur dédié. La thèse propose de décrire et d’analyser ce schéma de complémentation peu mentionné dans la littérature existante. La description des constituants de la structure est fondée sur l’étude d’une base de données. Un profil formel de ce type d’énoncés est proposé. Le sujet est toujours envisagé comme un contenant. Le verbe dénote un besoin naturel en lien avec le référent du sujet. Le complément de mesure code une quantité dont l’unité de mesure est un animé humain. Il n’y a pas de marqueur dédié à l’expression du capacitif dans le schéma. Cette modalité de type possible émerge via le lien, matérialisé par le verbe, entre les entités nominales sujet et complément de mesure. La capacité est rendue possible par le sujet thématisé, duquel le possible émane (aptitude interne).. Cette absence de marqueur spécifique pour coder le permissif rappelle la notion de construction linguistique. L’attribution d’un tel statut pour schéma est interrogée, en vertu des principes de la Grammaire de construction (non-compositionnalité du sens, stockage linguistique, productivité du schéma). / This thesis studies the capacitive syntactic pattern, which can be found in sentences such as The tent sleeps four or The bench seats two. It expresses the quantified capacity of the referent of the subject. In this complementation pattern, the alignement between the syntactic functions and the semantic roles is not prototypical. The subject is locative and the post-verbal measure complement has an agentive role, which is canonically associated with the subject. This unusual alignment allows the speaker to express capacity. The thesis describes and analyzes this complementation pattern, which has not been studied in the literature. The description of the constituents is based on the study of a database. Several formal syntactic features of the pattern are highlighted. The subject is always perceived as a container and the verb denotes a primary need that is closely related to the container. The measure complement denotes a numerical quantity whose unit of measurement is human animates. The capacitive meaning is not expressed by a single lexeme but through the whole pattern, which is meaningful. It is shown that the capacitive interpretation emerges through the congruent link between the container (subject) and the quantified volume (measure complement). The subject has properties that make it possible for the human animates to perform the event denoted by the verb. As the pattern itself has meaning, its status of construction (an unpredictable form–meaning pairing) is investigated by studying the main features of such grammatical sequences within the framework of construction grammar.

This dissertation investigates whether transitivity distinctions are manifest in the phonetics of linguistic and paralinguistic manual actions, namely lexical verbs and classifier constructions in American Sign Language (ASL) and gestures produced by hearing non-signers without speech (i.e., pantomime). A positive result would indicate that grammatical features are (a) transparent and (b) may thus arise from non-linguistic sources, here the visual-praxic domain. Given previous literature, we predict that transitivity is transparent in pantomime and classifier constructions, but opaque in lexical verbs. <div><br></div><div>We first collected judgments from hearing non-signers who classed pantomimes, classifier constructions, and ASL lexical verbs as unergative, unaccusative, transitive, or ditransitive. We found that non-signers consistently judged items across all three stimulus types, suggesting that there is transitivity-related information in the signed signal. </div><div><br></div><div>We then asked whether non-signers’ judging ability has its roots in a top-down or bottom-up strategy. A top-down strategy might entail guessing the meaning of the sign or pantomime and then using the guessed meaning to assess/guess its transitivity. A bottom-up strategy entails using one or more meaningful phonetic features available in the formation of the signal to judge an item. We predicted that both strategies would be available in classing pantomimes and classifier constructions, but that transitivity information would only be available top-down in lexical verbs, given that the former are argued to be more imagistic generally than lexical verbs. Further, each strategy makes a different prediction with respect to the internal representation xv of signs and pantomimes. The top-down strategy would suggest signs and pantomimes are unanalyzable wholes, whereas the bottom-up strategy would suggest the same are compositional. </div><div><br></div><div>For the top-down analysis, we correlated lexical iconicity score and a measure of the degree to which non-signers ‘agreed’ on the transitivity of an item. We found that lexical iconicity only weakly predicts non-signer judgments of transitivity, on average explaining 10-20% of the variance for each stimulus class. However, we note that this is the only strategy available for lexical verbs. </div><div><br></div><div>For the bottom-up analysis, we annotate our stimuli for phonetic and phonological features known to be relevant to transitivity and/ or event semantics in sign languages. We then apply a text classification model to try to predict transitivity from these features. As expected, our classifiers achieved stably high accuracy for pantomimes and classifier constructions, but only chance accuracy for lexical verbs. </div><div><br></div><div>Taken together, the top-down and bottom-up analyses were able to predict nonsigner transitivity judgments for the pantomimes and classifier constructions, with the bottom-up analysis providing a stronger, more convincing result. For lexical verbs, only the top-down analysis was relevant and it performed weakly, providing little explanatory power. When interpreting these results, we look to the semantics of the stimuli to explain the observed differences between classes: pantomimes and classifier constructions both encode events of motion and manipulation (by human hands), the transitivity of which may be encoded using a limited set of strategies. By contrast, lexical verbs denote a multitude of event types, with properties of those events (and not necessarily their transitivity) being preferentially encoded compared to the encoding of transitivity. That is, the resolution of transitivity is a much more difficult problem when looking at lexical verbs. </div><div><br></div><div>This dissertation contributes to the growing body of literature that appreciates how linguistic and paralinguistic forms may be both (para)linguistic and iconic at the same time. It further helps disentangle at least two different types of iconicities (lexical vs. structural), which may be selectively active in some signs or constructions xvi but not others. We also argue from our results that pantomimes are not holistic units, but instead combine elements of form and meaning in an analogous way to classifier constructions. Finally, this work also contributes to the discussion of how Language could have evolved in the species from a gesture-first perspective: The ‘understanding’ of others’ object-directed (i.e. transitive) manual actions becomes communicative.</div>

Although data collection through discrete choice experimentsconducted using surveys are commonly used in research, aimingto improve data quality is still serviceable and necessary. Three distinct experiments were conducted with the objectives of improving data quality by better tailoring experiments to market conditionsas well as decreasing complexity and fatigue. First, consumer willingness-to-pay(WTP) for yogurt attributes was estimatedusing a survey targeted to be nationally representative of the US.A novel approach was used to allow for self-selection into the choice experiment for commonly purchased types of yogurt.On average, respondentswere willing-to-paya positive amount for requiring pasture access and not permitting dehorning/disbudding for both traditional and Greek yogurt. Respondents had positive WTPfor Greek yogurt labeled free of high fructose corn syrup, and were willing-to-pay morefor low-fat yogurt when compared to nonfat for both yogurt types.<div><br></div><div> Second, anew WTP data collection method, employing component discrete choice experiments in place of traditional larger experimental designs,was proposedand compared to the traditional method to elicit yogurt consumer’s WTP for attributes in yogurt. The new WTP data collection method was designed with the objective of decreasing complexity by having respondents participate in fewer choice scenarios. Incidences of attribute non-attendance (ANA), a potential simplifying heuristic that results from complexity, occurred less frequently for all attributes in the new WTP data collection method with one exception. Exhibiting ANA for any attribute was negatively correlated with the time respondents took to complete the choice experiment.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Finally, through the use of a newbest-worst scaling(BWS)data collection method,consumer preferences for fluid dairy milk attributes were elicited and results as well as measures of data quality were compared to the traditional method of BWS. Nine attributes of fluid milk were included in this study: container material, rbST-free, price, container size, fat content, humane handling of cattle, brand, required pasture access for cattle, and cattle fed an organic diet. The top (price) and bottom (container material) attributes in terms of relative ranking did not change between the new BWS data collection method and the traditional BWS method. The new BWS data collection method resulted in fewer incidences of ANA for all attributes except one. There was not a statistical difference in the number of transitivity (an axiom of consumer theory) violators,between the new and traditional BWS methods.<br></div>

No description available.

According to the dominant approach in the theory of vagueness, the nature of the vagueness of an expression ‘F’ consists in its presenting borderline cases in an appropriately ordered series: objects which are neither definitely F nor definitely not F (where the notion of definiteness can be semantic, ontic, epistemic, psychological or primitive). In view of the various problems faced by theories of vagueness adopting the dominant approach, the thesis proposes to reconsider the naive theory of vagueness, according to which the nature of the vagueness of an expression consists in its not drawing boundaries between any neighbouring objects in an appropriately ordered series. It is argued that expressions and concepts which do present this feature play an essential role in our cognitive and practical life, allowing us to conceptualize—in a way which would otherwise be impossible—the typically coarse-grained distinctions we encounter in reality. Despite its strong initial plausibility and ability to explain many phenomena of vagueness, the naive theory is widely rejected because thought to be shown inconsistent by the sorites paradox. In reply, it is first argued that accounts of vagueness based on the dominant approach are themselves subject to higher-order sorites paradoxes. The paradox is then solved on behalf of the naive theory by rejecting the unrestricted transitivity of the consequence relation on a vague language; a family of logics apt for reasoning with vague expressions is proposed and studied (using models with partially ordered values). The characteristic philosophical and logical consequences of this novel solution are developed and defended in detail. In particular, it is shown how the analysis of what happens in the attempt of surveying a sorites series and deciding each case allows the naive theory to recover a "thin" notion of a borderline case.