Date: 14-Jun-2010
From: Galit Sassoon <galitadargmail.com>
Subject: The Semantics of English Negative Prefixes
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Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-1979.html
AUTHOR: Zeki HamawandTITLE: The Semantics of English Negative PrefixesPUBLISHER: Equinox Publishing Ltd.YEAR: 2009
Galit W. Sassoon, ILLC, University of Amsterdam
SUMMARY
This book presents research on a wide range of negative prefixes arguing that(i) each affix has multiple interpretations, prototypical and peripheral; (ii)the set of interpretations of an affix are partially overlapping with theinterpretations of other affixes; (ii) due to a competition between affixes, adecision to use one rather than another always affects interpretation. Chapters1-2 are devoted to criticism of previous theories and description of theframework, methodology (cognitive linguistics and usage based semantics), andmain goals and ideas. Chapter 3 introduces a list of the interpretations foreach affix. Chapter 4 defines DOMAINS - super-categories of interpretations; itdescribes the common denominator between prefixes belonging to a single domain,as well as different FACETS - subcategories of interpretations - along whichthese prefixes differ. Two prefixes and two domains are presented by way ofillustration in the introductory chapters. Chapter 5 explains the notion ofCONSTRUAL of a situation - the ways in which a situation is linguisticallyencoded. In this chapter, the author presents word pairs sharing a base butdiffering in prefix, such as 'non-social' vs. 'asocial', exemplifying his ideasabout the prefixes and their categories.
All in all, the book describes eight general domains of interpretation fornegative prefixes, and their different facets, as follows.
The domain of DEGRADATION contains affixes that can express decline in rank,importance, size, etc. (p14-15) where, typically, 'ab' expresses quality (as in'abnormal'), 'sub' expresses degree (as in 'sub-human') and 'under' - rank (asin 'under-servant').
The domain of INADEQUACY contains affixes that can express partial possession ofthe thing described by the base (p36) where, typically, 'pseudo' expressesdeception (as in 'pseudo-intellectual'), 'quasi' expresses resemblance (as in'quasi-judicial role') and 'semi' - incompleteness (as in 'semi-literate').
The domain of DISTINCTION contains affixes that can express contrast anddissimilarity between entities or their properties. The prefixes in this domaindiffer along the scale of contrariness-contradictoriness. The most stronglyassociated with contrariness is 'in', followed by 'un', 'dis', 'a', and 'non',which is the most contradictory. 'Non' is the most neutral and least evaluative(followed by 'a', etc.), as in, e.g., 'non-professional' vs. 'unprofessional'(the former relates to people who are not trained, while the latter evaluatespeople as being under the standard expected in their profession),'non-essential' vs. 'inessential' (roughly, not necessary vs. not important) and'non-approval' vs. 'disapproval' (mere lack of approval vs. condemnation),'atypical' vs. 'untypical' work (only the latter can mean 'bad'), 'non-moral'and 'amoral' vs. 'immoral', 'unmeasurable' (something for which no measuringmeans exist) vs. 'immeasurable' (too huge to be measurable), etc. (cf. p130-137and notes 3-5 of ch.5).
The domain of OPPOSITION contains affixes that can express disagreement (theidea of 'in response to'), through reacting, preventing, defending, etc. (p104)where 'anti' is typically used to express opposition to attitudes and opinions(as in 'anti-colonialism'), harmful medical states (as in 'anti-histamine') andweapons (as in 'anti-missile'); 'counter' describes an event or action to dealwith a situation (as in 'counter-attack') and 'contra' expresses extremecontrasts between things (as in 'contra-distinction'). Thus, we find the pair'anti-revolution' (objection to the idea of a revolution) vs.'counter-revolution' (revolution against the result of a prior revolution; p138-9).
The domain of TREATMENT contains affixes expressing wrong, false or impropertreatment of people or things (p116-119), where 'mal' relates to intentionalbehavior (as in 'maladministration') and 'mis' unintentional or accidentalbehavior (as in 'misconstrued'); cf. 'maladjustment' vs. 'misadjustment'(inability to properly adapt vs. non-fit; the latter applies to, for instance,knobs) and 'maltreat' vs. 'mistreat' (roughly, treat cruelly or brutally vs.treat unkindly; p143).
The domain of PRIVATION contains affixes that can express lacking, not having,and preventing from having (p108). It is argued that typically 'dis' is used toexpress actions such as harming, reducing and punishing people (as in'dishonor'), 'de' expresses damaging, neglecting or relocating of concretethings (as in 'debase') and 'un' relates to abstract things and situations (asin 'unhealthy'). While 'dis' conveys lacking, 'un' conveys 'bereft of',illustrated by the pair 'disbelief' (lack of belief) vs. 'unbelief' (lack offaith) and 'disburden' vs. 'unburden' (p139-140).
The domain of REMOVAL contains affixes that can express removal, releasing,ridding or taking away, where typically 'dis' relates to people (as in'disarmed'), 'de' to things (as in 'degreased') and 'un' to objects ('unload').In p140, we find 'decoupled' vs. 'uncoupled' and 'defrock' vs. 'unfrock' (removefrom a privileged position vs. remove clothes).
The domain of REVERSAL contains affixes that can express reversing, turningaround, or inverting from one state to the opposite (undoing), where typically'dis' refers to people (as in 'discredit'), 'de' to things and places('decipher') and 'un' to objects ('unlock'); cf. 'debar' (e.g., people from abar) vs. 'unbar' (e.g., a door) and 'disvalue' (to think of something as havinga low value) vs. 'devalue' (to lower the value of something; p141-2).
Finally, inter-domain construals are argued to be responsible for interpretingrival prefixes from different domains, as in 'non-human' vs. 'anti-human' (thatrelate to a category distinction vs. opposition with respect to humans),'unfortunate' vs. 'misfortunate' (category distinction vs. treatment),'displaced' vs. 'misplaced' (reversal vs. treatment), etc.
EVALUATION
The main merit of this book lies in the attempt to study a wide range ofnegative prefixes comparatively. As argued in section 1.2, one does not findcomprehensive comparisons between negative prefixes in, for example,dictionaries, reference grammars, and morphology. Furthermore, the author'sbasic assumption, namely that the interpretation of a prefix in a given contextof use is affected by the interpretation of other prefixes, is interesting andplausible. In accordance, the book provides interesting insights regarding theinterpretation of different prefixes. Nonetheless, some of the author'sconclusions are not sufficiently convincing, due to problems with both theempirical procedure and the manner of presentation of the results.
First, the book contains long and detailed introductory descriptions ofcognitive-linguistic and related theories, general critique of formal theories,descriptions of structure of the book and its parts, goals, procedures andsummaries. These issues occupy a large part not only of chapters 1 and 2, butalso of each one of the three main chapters (3-5). As a result, the core partsconsisting of the actual study and its results cover less than a half of thewhole book (mainly, pages 60-84 in ch.3, pages 99-120 in ch.4 and pages 130-148in ch.5). This is a pity given the admirable, ambitious goal of providing acomprehensive study of a wide range of negative prefixes and the relationsbetween them. It is a pity also because the 'introductory' sections arerepetitive. For example, chapter 3 has two almost identical descriptions of itsstructure, in the first and second page of the chapter; so does chapter 4. Also,Prototype theory and Domain theory are presented at least 3 times. The sectionscriticizing previous formal theories cite theories whose nature and problems arewell known, including the classical theory, rule-based morphology andreferential semantics. Some of the cited theories are from 1930-1960 (p91,section 4.2.1). These reviews could have been dispensed with (by referring toany of the existing introductions to cognitive linguistics), leaving space for areview of contemporary literature about negation and antonymy, whether inpsycholinguistics (such as Giora 2006 and references within), corpus linguistics(such as Tribushinina 2009 and references within) or formal semantics (such asKennedy 2001 and references within).
Second, section 1.4.2 explains the merits of Usage-based semantics, according towhich the linguistic system is shaped by actual data. Collocations and frequencyof tokens and types are said to be the core factors (say, number of occurrencesof 'un', number of occurrences of prefixes sharing a given interpretation with'un', etc.) In fact the author looks at real examples taken from the BNC andtheir collocations. Yet, the book does not present any quantitative measure offrequency of occurrence or co-occurrence. The book provides lists of possibleinterpretations for each affix, illustrated by real examples. Yet, nothingreveals the extent to which these lists are exhaustive or the extent to whichthe generalizations are conclusive (how many of the examples in the BNC do theyexhaust?). The author divides the prefixes into primary and secondary, andorders the different interpretations of any given prefix by prototypicality, buthe remains silent as to the motivating evidence for each specific claim. Theauthor disregards non-affixal negation and negative suffixes without justifyingthis choice (don't negative prefixes compete also with negative morphemes otherthan prefixes?). Finally, the author states for almost any example of a negativeword what it means (e.g., 'mislay' means ''to lose something temporarily byforgetting where you have put it''; p117), based on dictionary definitions andpersonal intuitions, although the author himself states that these arenon-reliable sources. It is certainly possible that the author has done verygood and careful work, based on reliable, representative samples of examples,dictionaries and informants. However, in the absence of concrete details aboutthese samples, the validity and generality of his claims remain in doubt.
Third, at times, it is not so easy to see the logical relations leading fromdata (examples, collocations) to conclusions (claims regarding differentprefixes), in particular in chapters 4 and 5. For example, the author points outdissimilarities between the collocations characteristic of different words,e.g., 'decipher' collocates with 'messages' and 'wording', while 'deforest' with'forest' and 'land' (p115), but what can we conclude here? The author could notpoint out a common denominator of the collocations of, e.g., 'de' words versus'un' words in general, which is disappointing. The prefixes are alsocharacterized in slightly different ways in different chapters and sections.Consider, for example, the domain of distinction. In p99-104 it is argued that,typically, 'in', 'ir' and 'im' are used to express properties of situations (asin 'inappropriate' and 'irregular'), 'un' is used to express properties ofthings ('untidy'), 'dis' - attitudes of people ('dishonest'), 'a' - opposingfeatures of things ('atonal') and 'non' different plans of action('non-compliance'). However, the picture drawn in chapter five is a bitdifferent. For example, on p131, it is argued that 'a' applies to people andanimates (as in 'he was asocial') and 'non' to areas of knowledge (as in'non-social areas of linguistics'; cf. also to 'unsocial hours'). In p132, it isargued that 'dis' applies to people and things (as in 'disappearance') and 'non'to humans (as in 'non-appearance'). On p133, it is argued that 'un' applies topeople's behavior (as in 'unprofessional') and 'non' to people (as in'non-professional'). On p135 it is argued that 'a' applies to people and theirattitudes while 'in' to their actions (as in 'amoral person' vs. 'immoralaction'), and so on. To the best of my understanding, the different sectionsprovide different, mutually inconsistent generalizations regarding thecharacteristic collocations of e.g. 'non'; likewise for other prefixes.
Also, despite the fact that minimal pairs such as 'non-social' vs. 'asocial'constitute the most straightforward evidence for differences between rivalprefixes, the main discussion of such minimal pairs is delayed up to the lastchapter and includes only one or two examples for each prefix pair. Again, inthe absence of an exhaustive sample of examples, no generalization can be drawn.Additional invaluable examples are found in the notes, but the notes do notallow enough space to establish important arguments, and constant shifts fromthe chapter to the notes do not facilitate readability. As a result, theconnections between the examples given in chapter 5 and the general claimspresented in chapters 3-4 often remain loose.
Fourth, some of the terminology used in the book is not sufficiently explained.For example, what is the distinction between the terms 'thing' and 'object', asused in chapter 4? And more importantly, what is negation? What is a contrast?What is an opposition? What creates them? When is it the case that something isnot? In order to provide a satisfying answer to these questions it is notsufficient to use many near-synonyms of negation (cf. p99). With these looseends, certain facts remain unexplained; for example, it is argued that in'unqualified' vs. 'disqualified', 'un' evokes the privation domain, while 'dis'- the reversal domain. But nothing explains precisely how and why this happensto be the case; according to the claims in ch. 3 there are many other possiblescenarios.
At last, some explanations are redundant or suffer from flaws; to take oneexample, it is argued that the basic interpretation of 'semi', namely 'half' (asin 'semi-tone'), can change and extend into another, namely 'twice' (as in'semi-weekly'). But no reference to extensions is necessary here. The typicalinterpretation ('occurs every half a week') already entails 'twice a week'.Stipulating an additional peripheral sense for 'semi' is unnecessary. To takeanother example, Horn (2002) argues that 'un' differs from 'non' with respect tothe creation of contrary vs. contradictory antonym pairs (namely ones that allowor do not allow for a borderline area, as in e.g., 'tall/short' vs.'open/closed', respectively). Expanding on this idea, the author claims thatthings can be contradictory or contrary to different degrees. However, he doesnot explicate precisely how these degrees are characterized and in severaldifferent places he argues that contradictoriness creates non-gradableproperties, which is clearly wrong, e.g., 'open' implies 'not-closed', and yetthings can be somewhat open, very open, too open, not open enough, etc.;likewise, examples such as 'typical/atypical' are used to illustrate a highdegree of contradictoriness, although these adjectives are clearly gradable (seeKennedy and McNally 2005 for a lengthy discussion of these matters).
To conclude, this book can be useful and inspiring for readers working on thetopic, but it cannot serve as a basis for firm conclusions regarding thesemantics and usage of negative prefixes.
REFERENCES
Giora, Rachel (2006). Is negation unique? On the processes and products ofphrasal negation. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 979-980.Horn, L. (2002) Uncovering the un-word: A study in lexical pragmatics. SophiaLinguistica 49: 1-64.Kennedy, Christopher. 2001. Polar opposition and the ontology of degrees.Linguistics and Philosophy 24(1): 33-70.Kennedy, Christopher and McNally, Louise. 2005. Scale structure and. thesemantic typology of gradable predicates. Language 81: 345-381.Tribushinina, Elena, 2009, The linguistics of zero: A cognitive reference pointor a phantom? Folia Linguistica 43/2: 417-461.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Galit Weidman Sassoon is a postdoc researcher in the institute of logic, language and computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam (UVA). Her main interests are natural language semantics and pragmatics, and their interface with cognitive psychology. She currently works on problems pertaining to nouns and adjectives, including vagueness, comparison and antonymy.
Page Updated: 14-Jun-2010
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