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An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. [1] Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym , with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite.
A morphological gap is the absence of a word that could exist given the morphological rules of a language, including its affixes. [1] For example, in English a deverbal noun can be formed by adding either the suffix -al or -(t)ion to certain verbs (typically words from Latin through Anglo-Norman French or Old French).
An example is "inept," which seems to be "in-" + *"ept," although the word "ept" itself does not exist [citation needed]. Such words are known as unpaired words. Opposites may be viewed as a special type of incompatibility. [1] Words that are incompatible create the following type of entailment (where X is a given word and Y is a different word ...
The word "inept" appears several times in passing, though not in the "Unpaired words in English" table, with the suggested antonym "ept". But I've occasionally wondered whether its proper opposite is "apt".
English does have some words that are associated with gender, but it does not have a true grammatical gender system. "English used to have grammatical gender. We started losing it as a language ...
If the word 'conversent' doesn't exist, then the article Conversation has to be corrected. I am not sure it is not a linguistic technical term, even if I'd agree that it is not used colloquially. OsmanRF34 16:31, 8 September 2013 (UTC) The word exists, but not in English.
Affixes may be inflectional, indicating how a certain word relates to other words in a larger phrase, or derivational, changing either the part of speech or the actual meaning of a word. [6] Most roots in English are free morphemes (e.g. examin-in examination, which can occur in isolation: examine), but others are bound (e.g. bio-in biology).
In linguistics, blocking is the morphological phenomenon in which a possible form for a word cannot surface because it is "blocked" by another form whose features are the most appropriate to the surface form's environment. [1] More basically, it may also be construed as the "non-occurrence of one form due to the simple existence of another." [2]