Abstract
The linguistic picture fuzzy set (LPFS) is an extension of the linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy set (LIFS), and can contain more information than the LIFS. In this paper, the degrees of positive, neutral and non-membership of PFSs are expressed in linguistic terms, which can more easily describe the uncertain and vague information existing in the real world. By combining the PFS and the linguistic term, we define the LPFS and propose operational rules for linguistic picture fuzzy numbers (LPFNs). We further propose weighted averaging and weighted geometric operators and discuss their properties. Additionally, we propose an approach to deal with a multiple-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) problem based on the developed aggregation operators. Finally, we present an illustrative example to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the developed method by comparing it with existing methods. In addition, our method can be utilized not only to solve problems with linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (LIFNs), but also to deal with problems with LPFNs, and is a generalization of a number of existing methods.