Precision is an important consideration in communication. But human language is not capable of exhaustive precision. At some point you have to assume background knowledge or communication will get bogged down.
And not all languages are equally capable of precision in short space. A neat linguistic note from Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct):
When English speakers decide whether or not to put –ed onto the end of a verb, they must pay attention to tense, the relative time of occurrence of the event they are referring to and the moment of speaking. Wintu speakers need not bother with tense, but when they decide which suffix to put on their verbs, they must pay attention to whether the knowledge they are conveying was learned through direct observation or by hearsay.
English speakers can communicate this, too, but not within the verb itself. Sometimes the demands of economy will outweigh the demands of precision, and this level of precision—which Wintu demands everywhere—can be safely ignored by English speakers. And that’s okay!
I’ve always found chapter 6—”Words and Precision”—of this free online book by Vern Poythress to be helpful.