- Privative
A privative, named from Latin "" [" [http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe?privare privare] ", at
William Whitaker's Words .] , "to deprive", is a particle that negates or inverts the value of the stem of the word. InIndo-European languages many privatives are prefixes; but they can also be suffixes, or more independent elements.Privative prefixes
In English there are three primary privative prefixes, all
cognate from PIE:*' from West Germanic; e.g. "un"precedented, "un""'believable
*' from Latin; e.g. "in"capable, "in""'articulate".
*', calledalpha privative , fromAncient Greek ', '; e.g. "a"pathetic, "a""'biogenesis .These all stem from a PIE syllabic nasal privative *"n̥-", the zero ablaut grade of the negation *"ne", i.e. "n" used as a vowel, as in some English pronunciations of "
button ". This is the source of the 'n' in 'an-' privative prefixed nouns deriving from the Greek, which had both. For this reason, it appears as "an-" before vowel, e.g. "an"orexia, "an"esthesia.The same prefix appears in
Sanskrit , also as "a-", "an-". InNorth Germanic languages , the -"n"- has disappeared andOld Norse has "ú-" (e.g. ú-dáins-akr), Danish and Norwegian have "u-", whereas Swedish uses "o", and Icelandic uses the etymologically related "ó".Privative suffixes
Some languages have privative suffixes; "-less" is an example in English, and "-t(a)lan" or "-t(e)len" is an example in Hungarian (a non-IE language).
References
ee also
*
Privative a
*copulative a
*
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