A framework for evaluating fusion operators based on the theory of generalized quantifiers

Fuzzy linguistic quantifiers have gained importance as operators for information combination and the fusion of gradual evaluations. They are particularly appealing because of their ease-of-use: people are familiar with these operators in the same way as in everyday language. However, work on mathematical foundations and linguistic justification of fuzzy linguistic quantifiers is scarce. In the paper, we propose a framework for evaluating approaches to fuzzy quantification which relates these to the logic-linguistic theory of generalized quantifiers. By reformulating these approaches as fuzzification mechanisms, we can investigate properties of the fuzzification mappings which express important aspects of the meaning of natural language quantifiers.