Indeterminacy, context, economy and well-formedness in specialist communication

In this article I make a contrast between the concepts of indeterminacy and well-formedness on the one hand, and the concepts of vagueness and exactness on the other hand. In the further distinction between determination (degree of vagueness) and specification (degree of generality) I exemplify with the genitive deverbal noun construction in Norwegian. Various approaches to the concept of context are discussed and I apply Kubińsky’s vagueness model to demonstrate that there are some areas of grammar, such as the categorial status of the parts of speech, where the question of membership very seldom arises, although gradience is present.