I have to add that the Wikipedia article on "Privative" agrees with Jim and Fred, and disagrees with me. Perhaps linguists use it in a different, technical sense. On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:
I knew the word "privative" but I didn't think that's what it meant. A privative affix means "without, lacking"; an example in English is the suffix -less; "paperless" means "without paper"; it does not mean "not paper". Further, the prefix non- is not privative, at least according to the meaning of the word I was taught.
On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 12:48 AM, Hilarie Orman <ho@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
This seems like an excellent treatise on the subject, and it does not contain a word that subsumes the concept of "negative prefixation" nor does it contain "privation":
The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean edited by David Willis, Christopher Lucas, Anne Breitbarth
Hilarie
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