non-discrete grammar

The name given to a LINGUISTIC MODEL suggested by the American linguist John Robert Ross (b. 1938) in the early 1970s (as an alternative to the EXTENDED STANDARD THEORY of TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR), which analyses LANGUAGE as a series of DISCRETE contrasts (e.g. grammatical v. ungrammatical, applicability v. non-applicability of RULES). In non-discrete grammar, however, such notions as grammaticality, rule applicability, CLASS membership, etc., are seen as matters of degree. Accounting for the existence of marginally grammatical sentences, SEMI-SENTENCES, and so on, is conceived as a major aim of linguistic theory, and INDETERMINACY of this kind is seen as an essential feature of COMPETENCE. The idiosyncratic terminology which this model uses (e.g. SQUISH, ‘nouniness’, ‘clausematiness’, etc.) has endeared it to some, and been a source of irritation to others. Its emphasis on the analysis of problematic DATA has been welcomed, but so far there has been relatively little development of the approach in linguistics as a whole, and its theoretical significance is controversial.