dewords

Dewords are a term used in linguistic theory to describe a small class of words or affixes that signal the withdrawal or removal of a referent or proposition from discourse. Unlike standard negation, which asserts that something is false, dewords indicate that an element no longer features in the speaker’s current shared knowledge or in the ongoing discourse. The concept is theoretical and not widely standardized, and it is typically used to model deletion phenomena such as ellipsis, retraction, or topic shift in discourse analysis.

Origin and use: The term deword combines de- as a prefix of removal with word. In many accounts, dewords can be realized as particles, affixes, or standalone words that attach to a noun, verb, or clause and alter its status in the discourse model without asserting a proposition’s falsity.

Morphology and syntax: Dewords may appear as pre-nominal markers (nu-NP), as clausal operators (que-S), or as post-posed elements that retroactively adjust what is assumed to be known. They interact with anaphora, focus, and ellipsis by marking which elements remain part of the communicative context.

Examples: In a hypothetical language, nu-apple marks that the apples are no longer under discussion. In another construction, que-go marks that the act of going is rescinded.

See also: negation, ellipsis, deletion, discourse marker, constructed language.