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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 ...
why’d: why did why'dja: why did you why’re: why are why’s: why has / why is / why does willn’t: will not (archaic) won’t: will not wonnot: will not (archaic) would’ve: would have wouldn’t: would not wouldn’t’ve: would not have y’ain’t: you are not / you have not / you did not (colloquial) y’all: you all (colloquial ...
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 ...
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).
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". If so, "inept" would classify as a sort of "false friendless", wouldn't it? yoyo 01:39, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
[not verified in body] [4] [page range too broad] English borrowed many words from Old Norse, the North Germanic language of the Vikings, [5] and later from Norman French, the Romance language of the Normans, which descends from Latin. Estimates of native words derived from Old English range up to 33%, [6] with the rest made up of outside ...