squish (n.)

A term introduced into LINGUISTIC analysis by the American linguist John Robert Ross (b. 1938) in the early 1970s, as part of his notion of NON-DISCRETE GRAMMAR; it refers to a continuum along which LEXICAL ITEMS can be placed. For example, on the gradient between the ‘poles’ of VERB and NOUN, lexical items are seen as displaying degrees of verb-ness or noun-ness, and SYNTACTIC RULES are seen as applying with varying PRODUCTIVITY to different parts of the continuum. For example, nouns used as PREMODIFIERS in noun PHRASES fall between the CLASSES of noun and ADJECTIVE (e.g. the railway station, the town clock), in that some but not all rules which apply to nouns can be used (cf. the town’s clock, *the towns clock, etc.). INDETERMINATE or FUZZY categories are the focus of attention. What remains unclear, in this approach, is the extent to which these cases are sufficiently different from other problems of classification to warrant a radical reformulation of linguistic theory.