Negated Adjectives in Modern English
2005; Routledge; Volume: 77; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00393270500355130
ISSN1651-2308
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. G. H. von Wright considers prefix‐negation to be logically stronger than not‐negation, “nexal” negation in Jespersen's terms (Zimmer 1964:25). 2. Cf. abysmal, adamant, amorphous, anarchic, anonymous, atomic (Onions 1966 Onions, C. T. 1966. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon. [Google Scholar]). 3. The distinction privative: negative is not always clear‐cut. Is disloyal privative and unloyal negative? Dis‐ is particularly problematic in this context, as what look like negated adjectives, like discovered, disclosed, are themselves sometimes negated. However, our present rather hamfisted approach, where privative and negative adjectives are not distinguished, might be said to take care of the problem. 4. Those in ig‐ were assimilated to an initial g‐ which has since disappeared. See Onions (1966 Onions, C. T. 1966. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon. [Google Scholar] s.v. ignoble). 5. Unlikely is on record from 1375 and unruly from 1400 (OED). 6. Cf. bank/sink/monkey; English/angry/hungry; beanpole/chickenpox/downplay; beanbag/cranberry/chinbone. 7. “the majority [of o‐formations in Swedish] have a more or less derogatory import” 8. In his discussion of negated adjectives with nonexisting but potential positive equivalents, Dierickx (1991: 122) feels that the positives have a lower status than the negatives. 9. There are in fact three: irregardless, non‐smokeless, non‐stainless. 10. Anticlerical, anticlimactic, anticlimatic, anticolonial, anticommercial, etc. (57 items). Cf. Greenbaum's “prefixoids that have a negative feeling about them. Prefixoids are sound sequences that resemble genuine prefixes without qualifying for the status of prefix, since their etymology is not known to the vast majority of speakers.” (1996: 596) 11. “Circuit‐riding preachers and union‐organizing artisans (even the Painite freethinkers among them) agreed that high‐handed rule by the wealthy was both sinful and unrepublican.” (Corpus: usbooks/09. Text: B9000001351.) 12. Non‐Aboriginal, non‐Afrikaner, non‐Anglican, non‐Asian under a‐, and many others in the rest of the material: non‐Brazilian, non‐Caucasian, non‐Hispanic, non‐Iberian, non‐Latvian, non‐Lebanese, non‐Norwegian, non‐Peruvian, non‐Portuguese, non‐Romanian, non‐Scotch, non‐Slavonic. 13. 14. 15. Funk (1971: 371): “Purely contradictory opposites formed by un‐ from adjectival stems are fairly uncommon.” 16. “We might say that in such cases [non‐American vs. un‐American, nongrammatical vs. ungrammatical] non‐ selects the descriptive aspect of the stem for negation, while un‐ selects the evaluative one.” (Zimmer 1964: 33) 17. Funk (1971: 382) thinks that dis‐ cannot “denote contradictory opposition”, i.e. be classifying. 18. moveable and immoveable property – Stability: if well pegged to the ground tent is unmoveable. (BNC) 19. immeasurable grief – some unmeasurable fraction of a second 20. Thus, 2* (2+3+12+24+41+91)+3*9 = 373. Funk (1971: 380f.) lists other multiprefix adjectives, like mechanical or moral, which do not occur as such in the Corpus. 21. Cf. Marchand (1969: 161): “In productivity it [dis‐] cannot compete with un‐ which is far more common with words of general currency.” 22. “The main difference [between in‐ and un‐] is that in‐ derivatives are felt as close lexical units by the majority of speakers, while the prefix un‐ ‘stresses more strongly the derivative character of the negatived adjective’.” (Funk 1971: 377, quoting Marchand.) 23. Quoted in Zimmer (1964: 28f.) 24. Some examples are incompetant, incomsequent, incredable, indpendent, inedependent, injurous, innoxious, inoccuous, inocuous, invisibal, irristible, inher. 25. The four dis‐ words with a Germanic stem are disheartening, dislikeable, dismasted and distrustful. Cf. Marchand (1969: 161): “Dis‐ combines only with Romance adjs, chiefly such as have a learned or academic tinge.” [Notice the or!] The two in‐ words with a Germanic stem are inburnable and inaffordable with 1 occurrence each. (Unaffordable has 9 occurrences.) Funk (1971: 377) maintains that “in‐ was never prefixed to native stems”.
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