 In a wide range of languages, affixal negation on simplex bases reflects Aristotelian privation, whence the asymmetry between possible forms (unhappy, untrue, unkind) and impossible or unlikely ones (unsad, unfalse, uncruel). We can describe a failed comedy, but not a successful tragedy, as unfunny. As Jespersen (1917, 144) observes, the tendency of semi-productive negative affixation to be restricted to unmarked or positive bases combines with that of the preference for contrariety reviewed above: