Abstract We study indeterminacy of indicative meanings (disagreements about meanings of messages among players), a kind of language vagueness examined in Blume and Board (2013. “Language Barriers.” Econometrica 81 (2): 781–812). They, using a cheap talk model in which the state-distribution and the players’ language competence were ex-ante uncertain, demonstrated that this vagueness occurs as an equilibrium language. We expand the work of Blume and Board by using a model between an uninformed decision maker and an informed agent in which the state-distribution and the state are both ex-ante uncertain. We show that this two-dimensional uncertainty also leads to indeterminacy of indicative meanings, that is, to a set of conditions in which an agent with different perceptions of the state-distribution intentionally uses the same symbol for the different extents of information on the state. The vagueness, contrary to common expectations, can actually lead to welfare improvement.

中文翻译：

---

语言的模糊性：二维状态不确定性下的不确定性

摘要我们研究了指示性含义的不确定性（玩家之间关于消息含义的分歧），这是Blume and Board（2013。“ Language Barriers。” Econometrica 81（2）：781–812）中探讨的一种语言模糊性。他们使用一种廉价的谈话模型，在这种模型中，国家分配和参与者的语言能力是事先不确定的，证明了这种模糊性是作为一种平衡语言而发生的。我们使用不知情的决策者和知情的代理人之间的模型来扩展Blume和Board的工作，在该模型中，状态分配和状态都是事前不确定的。我们表明，这种二维不确定性还会导致指示性含义的不确定性，即 一组条件，其中对状态分布有不同理解的代理人有意使用相同的符号表示状态的不同程度。与通常的期望相反，这种模糊实际上可以改善福利。