Accidental gap

In linguistics an accidental gap, also known as a gap or a hole in the pattern, is a word or other form that does not exist in some language but which would be expected to exist given the grammatical rules of the language.^[1] For example, in English a noun may be formed by adding the suffix -al to a verb (e.g. recite → recital; arrive → arrival), yet there is no English word describal related to the verb describe.^[2] Although theoretically such a word could exist, it does not; its absence is therefore an accidental gap.

Various types of accidental gaps exist. Phonological gaps are either words allowed by the phonological system of a language which do not actually exist, or sound contrasts missing from one paradigm of the phonological system itself. Morphological gaps are non-existent words predicted by the morphological system, such as describal mentioned above. A semantic gap refers to the non-existence of a word to describe a difference in meaning seen in other sets of words within the language.

Phonological gaps

Often words that are allowed in the phonological system of a language are absent. For example, in English the consonant cluster /bl/ is allowed at the beginning of words such as blind or blister and the syllable rime /ɪk/ occurs in words such as sick or flicker. Even so, there is no English word pronounced */blɪk/. Although this potential word is phonologically well-formed, it happens not to exist.^[3]

The term "phonological gap" is also used to refer to the absence of a phonemic contrast in part of the phonological system.^[1] For example, Thai has several sets of stop consonants that differ in terms of voicing (whether or not the vocal cords vibrate) and aspiration (whether a puff of air is released). Yet there is no voiced velar consonant (/ɡ/).^[4] This lack of an expected distinction is commonly called a "hole in the pattern".^[3]

Morphological gaps

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 -tion to a verb. Some nouns of this pattern simply do not exist, even though there is no grammatical reason for them not to.^[5]

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", vonžu "I thrust (a knife)"), about 100 verbs in the second conjugation pattern (e.g. *lažu "I climb", *deržu "I talk rudely"; the asterisk indicates ungrammaticality) do not appear as first-person singular in the present-future tense.^[2] Morris Halle called this defective verb paradigm an example of an accidental gap.

A particularly conspicuous form of the opposite process (removal of an affix, rather than addition) arise in unpaired words, where removal of an affix yields a word that is not used, such as *effable from ineffable or *ambiguate from disambiguate. Note that other apparently unpaired words only coincidentally seem to have affixes, but are not analyzed as having affixes.^{[citation needed]}

Semantic gaps

In semantics a gap may be noted when a particular meaning distinction visible elsewhere in the lexicon is absent. For example, English words describing family members generally show gender distinction. Yet the English word cousin can refer to either a male or female cousin.^[1] Similarly, while there are general terms for siblings and parents, there is no comparable gender-neutral term for an aunt or uncle. The separate words predicted on the basis of this semantic contrast are absent from the language.

See also

• Lexical gap
• Semantic gap in computer programming languages and natural language processing

References