Conclusions and RelatedWorks

Abstract

In this book, our attention is focused on CWW based the ordered structure of linguistic values. Fromthe linguistic point of view, there are at least two types of uncertainties associated with a word [Wallsten and Budescu (1995)]: intra-personal uncertainty and inter-personal uncertainty. The former means that “except in very special cases, all representations are vague to some degree in the minds of the originators and in the minds of the receivers”. The latter means that “different individuals use diverse expressions to describe identical situations and understand the same phrases differently when hearing or reading them”. To deal with the two uncertainties, CWW have been studied by many researchers. In which, fuzzy sets of linguistic values are the main method to capture intra-personal uncertainty of linguistic values, and membership degrees of objects, which belong to linguistic values, describe uncertain degrees. Inter-personal uncertainty means the uncertainty that a group of people have about linguistic values, in principal, we need to collect from a group of subjects for CWW, this may be very difficult to do because this depends on knowledge and methodology. Compared with other methods for CWW, the ordered structure of linguistic values is determined by natural meanings of linguistic values, which do not need very knowledgeable background. On the other hand, because linguistic values mean different to different people, and so are uncertainties, this makes the ordered structure of linguistic values to be a partial ordering set or a lattice, in which, incomparability of linguistic values describes a kind of uncertainty of linguistic values. Furthermore, the ordered structure of linguistic values is easily embedded in an algebraic or logical structures, which provide alternative new methods for CWW. In the following, we summarize other excellent works for CWW, which are not introduced in the book, in which, some works are similar to CWW based the ordered structure of linguistic values.