- The corpus used for this study was the vocabulary material listed in the Petit Larousse (13th printing; Paris, 1963), hereafter referred to as PL.
- The criterion used was whether the unprefixed forms were also listed in the PL.
- With alternation of -ré- in the prefixed form with re- in the unprefixed form; cf. religieux, irréligieux.
- Cf. above, pp. 31, 38, 39.
- On the other hand, some in- forms belonging to this category have no unprefixed counterparts. Cf. the following observation: “Il faut remarquer qu'à côté des combinaisons avec in- on ne trouve pas toujours une forme simple sans in-. Tandis que incroyable dérive de croyable, inusable ne dérive pas d'usable: c'est une formation négative tirée directement du verbe user.” (Kr. Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue française, IH [Copenhagen, 1908], 235.)
- My informant remarked that immangé might sound fairly acceptable because of the familiarity of immangeable.
- Cf. the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, Vol. I (7th ed.; Paris, 1878) under in-—We shall not concern ourselves here with the possible lengthening of the first consonant in forms resulting from the application of the last four rules given.
- We have used 'in- to designate the morpheme.
- Nyrop, p. 234.
- “Littré” refers to É. Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, Vol. IV (“Édition intégrale”; Paris, 1957).
- Semantically there may be the difference that the “historical” in- is more likely to appear in contrary oppositions (e.g. moral—immoral).
- The representation non(-)has been chosen to indicate the fact that non is usually written apart from the following element (except for sequences non[-] +Noun).
- Walter von Wartburg and Paul Zumthor, Précis de syntaxe du français contemporain (2nded.; Berne, 1958), p. 58.
- It should be noted that non bien relié is possible when a contrast is being indicated, e.g. C'est un livre d'une apparence somptueuse, mais non bien relié. The distinction we want to make is between uses such as II m'a donné un livre pas bien relié versus the non-acceptable, or at least far less acceptable, Il m'a donné un livre non bien relié.
- Orthographie usage is not of much help in arriving at a decision; constructions of the type non(-)+ Adj. are usually not hyphenated, although hyphenation does occasionally occur. The hyphenated form non-euclidien (PL) has already been cited. It may be that hyphenation is usual for established terms such as non-euclidien where the semantic content of the total expression may be felt to consist in more than the mere negation of the content of the base. With nouns on the other hand the practice is to hyphenate consistently; cf. the examples from the PL given above. (Cf. also Max Peter, Über einige negative Präfixe im Modernfranzösischen als Ausdrucksmittel für die Gegensatzbildung [“Romanica Helvetica,” Vol. XXXII; Berne, 1949], pp. 15–19.)
- Cf. Jacques Damourette and Édouard Pichon, Des mots à la pensée: Essai de grammaire de la langue française, VI (Paris, n.d. [?1940]), 60–63, where this traditional interpretation is cited and then rejected as inadequate.
- “Le premier [non(-)] oppose la qualité niée à une autre dont on constate la présence encore qu'on puisse ne pas la mentionner. Pas nie la qualité en elle-même. Il en résulte que non a un caractère plus intellectuel, et pas plutôt affectif.” (Wartburg and Zumthor, p. 58).
- “Cette notion que l'amplexion par non a un caractère de rigueur intellectuelle tandis que l'amplexion par pas a un caractère d'éviction affective, nous paraît être celle qui-explique l'opposition générale de pas à non pour tous les adjectifs nominaux.” (Damourette and Pichon, p. 61.)
- The stress indications in these and the following examples are not meant to show anything beyond the relative distribution of stress on nicht,- or nicht-, and the following element, with ‘/’ marking the more strongly stressed of the two.—I have on the whole relied on myself as an informant, German being my native language.
- Lutz Mackensen, Neues Deutsches Wörterbuch (Laupheim [Wttbg.], 1952).
- Der Grosse Duden (12th ed.; Leipzig, 1941).
- One can hardly establish this point by using the lexical material listed in dictionaries, since they usually confine themselves to citing a small selection of the more common items; a sensible approach, since any attempt at a complete listing is, in view of the great productivity of this pattern, doomed to failure from the outset. But there can be little doubt for anyone who knows German that our statement is substantially correct.
- These forms too are of course usually stressed on the first syllable, i.e. on the prefix.
- Cf. especially Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, Vol. XI, Part III, ed. Karl Euling (Leipzig, 1936), hereafter referred to as Grimm-Euling. The entry for the prefix un- covers almost seventeen pages (cols. 1–34) and includes a detailed discussion of the stress patterns of forms in un-; this entry is followed by about 925 pages of words in un-. For the stress patterns of forms in un cf. also George Curme, A Grammar of the German Language (2nd ed.; New York, 1922), pp. 46–47.
- We shall not make an attempt at a precise semantic characterization of the deverbal suffixes -bar and -lich (cf. in this connection Curme, pp. 417, 424–25). Suffice it to say that -bar appears less liable than -lich to take on the meaning of ‘deserving to be…’ (cf. beachtlich, bedauerlich), -bar is clearly more productive as a counterpart to English -able ‘capable of being…’ (cf. befahrbar, essbar, teilbar, trinkbar, überquerbar, with no counterparts in lich).
- The first edition of Paul's Deutsches Wörterbuch (1896?) was not available to me. The quotations below are from the entry for un- in the fifth edition (Hermann Paul, Deutsches Wörterbuch, ed. Alfred Schirmer [5th ed.; Halle (Saale), 1956]), but this entry differs only in very minor details from the entry in the second edition, revised by Paul himself and published in 1908.
- Cf. above, pp. 41–42.
- Cf. above, p. 42.
- It might be added that there are some “positive” bases which have no obvious simplex antonyms and nevertheless have no derivatives in un-; e.g. nett.
- Grimm-Euling, col. 11.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. It seems unlikely that Grimm was describing the actual usage of his period.
- Cf. our remarks on uncruel, etc., above, p. 38.
- Paul, Wörterbuch, 5th ed., p. 656.
- Ibid.
- Curme, p. 433. It should be noted that both of the examples with nicht involve the unstressed particle, not the stressed prefix.
- For the use of negative prefixes with present participles in English and German, cf. also above, pp. 44, 53–54.
- We shall not deal here with the rather marginal “active” use of some past participles of intransitive verbs, as e.g. ein gedienter (studierter) Mann ‘a man who has served (studied).’ These forms all seem to have un- derivatives.
- Cf. above, pp. 39–40.
- Cf. above, p. 65; see also the discussion in Chapter V, pp. 83–89.
- We have not dealt here with the quite widespread use of un- with nouns in German, nor with some interesting semantic variants in the use of this prefix. With regard to the latter, we take this occasion to refer briefly to Grimm-Euling, where the following uses of the prefix are discussed: 1) the negative un- (e.g. unbedeckt); 2) the pejorative un- (e.g. Unmensch, Untat); 3) the expletive (pleonastic or tautological) un- (e.g. unzweifellos in the meaning of ‘doubtless,’ cf. irregardless); 4) the intensive un- (e.g. Unmenge, Unmasse). Some very peculiar dialectal uses. of the intensive un- are cited, thus Swiss Unmensch ‘an exceptionally big man,’ and similarly Unkue, Unnase. Other examples are: Bavarian ungross ‘very big,’ Hessian unbedeutend ‘very important’ (Grimm-Euling, cols. 22–28). In at least one case there is a contrast in standard German between two semantic variants of un-, namely in Untiefe ‘abyss’ (intensive un-) or ‘shoal’ (negative un-).
- It might be added that the OED cites a “pejorative” use of un- also in Old English. The OED gives as examples únœt ‘excessive eating,’ uncoðu ‘an evil disease,’ uncrœft ‘an evil art,’ and a few others (cf. OED, Un-, prefix1, 2. [e]). The un- in the first two examples seems, however, intensive rather than pejorative (coðu ‘disease’).
- bez- is somewhat reminiscent of A-/an- in English; cf. amorphous ‘formless’ (in English there is of course no independent form morph apart from its use as a technical term in linguistics, but what is to be noted here is that there is no adjective morphous ‘having form’) and anorganic ‘non-organic.’
- Cf. Slovar' sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka, Vol. I (Moscow and Lenin. grad, 1950).
- We shall not attempt to investigate whether or not there is a slight difference in meaning between the members of such pairs.
- There is unfortunately no distinction in stress such as the one we have discussed in connection with nicht in German (cf. above, p. 53). In Russian the stress pattern is usually not affected by the prefixing of ne-; cf. xoróšij—nexoróšij.
- Cf. V. F. Ivanova, Trudnye slučai upotreblenija ipravopisanija častic NE i NI (MOSCOW, 1962), with a bibliography on pp. 105–106; L. F. Cvetkova, “Logičeskij analiz pravil pravopisanija časticy ‘ne’ s suščestvitel'nymi, prilagatel'nymi i narečijami,” Logiko-grammatičeskie očerki (Moscow, 1961), pp. 237–43.
- Cvetkova, Logiko-grammatičeskie očerki, p. 237.
- Cf. Slovar' sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka, Vol. VII (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958), under ne… This volume of the dictionary will hereafter be referred to as Slovar' VII.
- Stylistically ne- in some of its contradictory uses is perhaps closer to German nicht-, which seems to have less of a learned air than English non-.
- A. I. Smirnitskij et al., Russian-English Dictionary (3rd ed.; Moscow, 1958). The dictionary lists approximately 50,000 words.
- It might be noted that ne- derivatives for both bol'šoj ‘large’ and malyj ‘small,’ as well as for malen'kij ‘small (diminutive form),’ are listed in the Slovar' VII.
- My informant considered nemalen'kij as slightly odd, but less so than e.g. nenizkij. Diminutive forms would as a general rule appear to resist ne- prefixation, which might account for my informant's reaction to nemalen'kij. In this connection, as well as for some other remarks on the use of ne-, see L. Yu. Maksimov, “Antonimija kak odin iz pokazatelej kačestvennosti prilagatel'nyx,” Učebnye zapiski moskovskogo gosudarst-vennogo pedagogičeskogo instituta imeni V. I. Lenina, CXXXIII (1958), 211–23.
- +
- In German too it would seem that eine nichteiserne Stange sounds better than eine nichtrote Blume or eine nichtkurze Stange. This may be due to the difficulty, in the two latter cases, of finding a context where one would use the complex terms rather than some common simplex ones; thus instead of nichtrot one would expect the mention of some particular color, and lang or länger is more likely to be used than nichtkurz.
- Cf. Grammatika russkogo jazyka (Moscow, 1960), I, 356.
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Volume 20, 1964 - Issue sup1: Monograph No.5