indeterminacy (n.)

A term used in LINGUISTICS to refer to a state of affairs in linguistic study in which there is uncertainty on the part of a native-speaker, or disagreement between NATIVE-SPEAKERS, as to what is GRAMMATICAL or ACCEPTABLE; or in which there is uncertainty on the part of a linguist, or between several linguists, as to how and where a boundary line between different types of STRUCTURE might best be drawn. Indeterminacy poses a major difficulty for linguistic theories which attempt to define the limits of grammaticality in an unequivocal way (as in GENERATIVE grammar). It is a major focus of attention in NON-DISCRETE or FUZZY GRAMMAR, and several analytical notions have been proposed to handle indeterminate phenomena (e.g. GRADIENCE, SQUISH).