This paper discusses the structural and semantic properties of Binominal Noun Phrases (BNPs) in English. BNPs involve two nominals, N 1 and N 2 , which are in a Subject-Predicate relationship with each other, such that N 1 is the Predicate and N 2 the Subject. Examples are a hell of a problem, a wonder of a city, that idiot of a prime minister etc. On the basis of various types of syntactic evidence, it is argued that they are headed by the second of the two nominals, not by the first one, as has often been claimed. It is further argued that BNPs do not involve movement, as has recently been suggested in the literature. A consequence of this study is that it supports viewing syntax as a flexible system, in which there may be a tension between a rigid arrangement of elements into categories and constituents, and the occurrence of unexpected configurations, or of shifts in patterns taking place diachronically or synchronically.

Many schools of modern linguistics generally adopt a rigid approach to categorisation by not allowing degrees of form class membership, degrees of resemblance to a prototype or overlaps between categories. This all-or-none conception of categorisation (Bolinger 1961) goes back to Aristotle, and has been pervasive and influential, especially in formal linguistics. The alternative view, prevalent amongst descriptive and cognitive linguists, is to posit grammars which pervasively display categorial vagueness, more usually calledgradience. In this article I will begin by briefly tracing some of the ideas on gradience in linguistics and philosophy. I will then argue, firstly, that gradienceshouldhave a role to play in language studies (both descriptive and theoretical). Secondly, I will show that two types of category fluidity should be distinguished. One type I will callSubsective Gradience(SG). It is intra-categorial in nature, and allows for members of a class to display the properties of that class to varying degrees. The other type is calledIntersective Gradience(IG). This is an inter-categorial phenomenon which is characterised by two form classes ‘converging’ on each other. Thirdly, I will argue that while the two types of gradience are grammatically real, IG is not as widespread as is often claimed. Finally, in this article I will attempt to be more precise about the vague phenomenon of gradience. To this end I will devise a formalisation of SG and IG, using a number of case studies mainly from English. The formalism makes use of morphosyntactic tests to establish whether an item belongs to a particular class or to a ‘bordering’ one by weighing up the form class features that apply to the item in question. This article can be seen to argue for a midway position between the Aristotelian and the cognitivist conceptions of categorisation in that I will defend a position that allows for gradience, but nevertheless maintains sharp boundaries between categories. The ideas put forward in this article have wider implications for the study of language, in that they address the problem posed by the existence of a tension between generally rigidly conceived linguistic concepts and the continuous phenomena they describe.

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