"Xgabe" tankerako hitz elkartuak

Abstract

One of the means that the Basque language has to signify "lack of" is the use the affix gabe. Although it could be considered as a suffix of derivation, it seems that in most cases it acts as a second component of composed words. The Basque language continually produces new words of this type; it is, therefore, a productive and living resource. The author provides a precise list of such words in common Basque, together with the phonetic and dialectal variants of the mentioned affix. On the other hand, a study is carried out of these compound words, their current use and the concrete limits of the composition, together with the imprecise limits between their composition and syntactic structure.