fuzzy (adj.)

A term derived from mathematics and used by some LINGUISTS to refer to the INDETERMINACY involved in the analysis of a linguistic UNIT or PATTERN. For example, several LEXICAL ITEMS, it is argued, are best regarded as representing a SEMANTIC CATEGORY which has an INVARIANT core with a variable (or ‘fuzzy’) boundary, this allowing for flexibility of APPLICATION to a wide range of entities, given the appropriate CONTEXT. The difficulty of defining the boundaries of cup and glass has been a well-studied example of this indeterminacy. Other items which lend fuzziness to language include sort of, rather, quite, etc. Fuzzy grammars, advocated in the early 1970s, were grammars capable of generating sentences with specific degrees of assigned grammaticality. The notion is seen as particularly important in NON-DISCRETE GRAMMAR.