This volume investigates the theoretical and empirical status of gradience in grammar, specifically addressing the tension between categorical grammaticality and scalar acceptability. The authors, a team of established researchers in linguistics and cognitive science, synthesize diverse perspectives to determine how gradience manifests across phonological and syntactic structures. By integrating data from psycholinguistic experiments and sociolinguistic variation, the text argues for a more nuanced model of language competence that accounts for degrees of acceptability rather than binary grammaticality.

Experts recognize this volume as a comprehensive reference for the study of non-categorical phenomena in generative linguistics. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which is intended for advanced students and professional linguists.