Covert (linguistics)
LINGUISTIC PROPERTY OF A FEATURE OF A WORD OR PHRASE WHERE THERE IS NO SURFACE (MORPHOLOGICAL) EVIDENCE OF ITS EXISTENCE WITHIN THAT WORD OR PHRASE, BUT ONLY IN CONCERT WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC ITEMS
Covert gender
In linguistics, a feature of a word or phrase is said to be covert if there is no surface evidence of its existence within that word or phrase. For example, many languages have covert grammatical gender in nouns, in that there is no way to tell from the form of a noun which gender it is; gender only becomes apparent in, for example, articles and adjectival agreement, which depend on gender.