privative (adj.)

A type of OPPOSITION recognized in PRAGUE SCHOOL PHONOLOGY, distinguished from GRADUAL and EQUIPOLLENT. A privative opposition is a BINARY one, where one member is seen as MARKED by the presence of a FEATURE, which its opposite member lacks (i.e. it is ‘unmarked’), as in the /p/ v. /b/ DISTINCTION in English, where the latter is seen as marked for VOICING.

A term used in some models of NON-LINEAR PHONOLOGY, notably UNDER-SPECIFICATION theory, referring to a FEATURE which can take only one value; also called monovalent and opposed to EQUIPOLLENT. For example, the features of NASALITY, ASPIRATION and GLOTTALIZATION have all been proposed as privative, in that all processes which affect them (e.g. ASSIMILATION) refer only to their [+] values. The extent to which privativity can be applied in the analysis of other (possibly all) features is a topic in contemporary phonological debate.