nonrealization

Nonrealization is a term used across disciplines to describe the absence or failure to bring about a state of affairs that was anticipated, planned, or possible. The exact sense depends on the field, but it generally marks a distinction between potential or intended outcomes and actual outcomes.

In philosophy and action theory, nonrealization refers to the divergence between an agent’s intention or decision and what is ultimately achieved. It can inform discussions of rational choice, constraints, luck, or hindrances that prevent realization and may contribute to analyses of responsibility and consequence.

In formal methods and computer science, realization often means a system satisfying a given specification. Nonrealization denotes that the specification is not realized by any system under the stated assumptions, or that a particular design fails to meet the specification. In temporal logic and related areas, realizability questions ask whether there exists a strategy that ensures a property holds under all possible behaviors; nonrealizability indicates that no such strategy exists.

In linguistics and semantics, realization refers to the actual form or grammatical realization of a feature in speech or text. Nonrealization can describe the absence of an expected realization within a given utterance or the nonoccurrence of a morphosyntactic or phonological form in a surface structure.

Because nonrealization is used in various contexts, its precise meaning is field-dependent, typically conveying the idea that a plan, property, or outcome did not come to fruition as anticipated.