unattestability
English
Noun
unattestability (uncountable)
- (rare) The property of being unattestable.
- 1964, Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, page 19:
- The unattestability of an alternative pronunciation [ […] ] for disburse might at first sight be ascribed to the presence of /b/ rather than /g/ or /d/ after /s/.
- 1976, Gloria Sheintuch, “On the Gradation of Grammatical Relations”, in Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, volume 6, number 1, Urbana, Ill.: Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, page 187:
- Thus the gradation of the direct object provides an explanation for the unattestability of [ +derived / -specific ] direct objects in the language.
- 1984, D[onald] Terence Langendoen; Paul Martin Postal, The Vastness of Natural Languages, Basil Blackwell, published 1985, →ISBN, pages 39 (Sentence Size Bounds) and 158 (The Characterization of Transfinite Sentences):
- Moreover, there is no reason for excluding them from L other than their size-determined and creature-dependent unattestability which would not equally justify excluding any sentence at all from L. […] Thus no linguist can ignore transfinite sentences on the grounds of their unattestability without equally ignoring almost all finite sentences.