Accidental gap
In linguistics an accidental gap, also known as a gap, paradigm gap, accidental lexical gap, lexical gap, lacuna, or hole in the pattern, is a potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite being theoretically permissible by the grammatical rules of that language.[1] For example, a word pronounced /zeɪ̯k/ is theoretically possible in English, as it would obey English word-formation rules, but does not currently exist. Its absence is therefore an accidental gap, in the ontologic sense of the word accidental (that is, circumstantial rather than essential).
Accidental gaps differ from systematic gaps, those words or other forms which do not exist in a language due to the boundaries set by phonological, morphological, and other rules of that specific language. In English, a word pronounced /pfnk/ does not and cannot exist because it has no vowels and therefore does not obey the word-formation rules of English. This is a systematic, rather than accidental, gap.
Various types of accidental gaps exist. Phonological gaps are either words allowed by the
Phonological gaps
Often words that are allowed in the phonological system of a language are absent. For example, in English the
The term "phonological gap" is also used to refer to the absence of a
plain voiceless | aspirated voiceless | voiced consonant |
---|---|---|
p | pʰ | b |
t | tʰ | d |
k | kʰ |
Morphological gaps
A morphological gap is the absence of a word that could exist given the morphological rules of a language, including its
verb | noun (-al) | noun (-ion) |
---|---|---|
recite | recital | recitation |
propose | proposal | proposition |
arrive | arrival | "arrivition" |
refuse | refusal | "refusion" |
describe | "describal" | description |
Many potential words that could be made following morphological rules of a language do not enter the
A defective verb is a verb that lacks some grammatical conjugation. For example, several verbs in Russian do not have a first-person singular form in non-past tense. Although most verbs have such a form (e.g. vožu "I lead"), about 100 verbs in the second conjugation pattern (e.g. *derz'u "I talk rudely"; the asterisk indicates ungrammaticality) do not appear as first-person singular in the present-future tense.[7] Morris Halle called this defective verb paradigm an example of an accidental gap.
The similar case of
Semantic gaps
A gap in
male | female | neutral |
---|---|---|
grandfather | grandmother | grandparent |
father | mother | parent |
son | daughter | child |
brother | sister | sibling |
uncle | aunt | pibling (but this coinage remains in limited use to date) |
nephew | niece | nibling (but this coinage remains in limited use to date)
|
cousin |
See also
- Idiom (language structure)
- Lacuna model
- Pseudoword, a unit that appears to be a word in a language but has no meaning in its lexicon
- Semantic gap in computer programming languages and natural language processing
- Sniglet, described as "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should"
Notes
References
- ^ ISBN 0-6312-2664-8.
- ^ a b Trask, Robert Lawrence (1996). A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology. London: Routledge.
- ^ Abramson, Arthur S. (1962). The Vowels and Tones of Standard Thai: Acoustical Measurements and Experiments. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics.
- ^ Kerstens, Johan; Eddy Ruys; Joost Zwarts, eds. (2001). "Accidental gap". Lexicon of Linguistics. Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS. Retrieved 2011-02-12.
- ^ Aronoff, Mark (1983). "Potential words, actual words, productivity and frequency". Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Linguists: 163–171.
- ^ ISBN 9783039118083.
- ^ Halle, Morris (1973). "Prolegomena to a theory of word-formation". Linguistic Inquiry. 4: 451–464.
- ^ Quinion, Michael (23 November 1996). "Unpaired words". World Wide Words. Retrieved 2012-07-31.