Negative Affixes in the Derivation of English Adjectives

This prefix, which goes back to a borrowing of the Greek alpha privativum, is clearly of very limited occur­rence in English. Many of the adjectives in which it is etymologically present have been borrowed in the derived form from Greek (sometimes through Latin), and frequently have no positive counterpart in. English (e. g. anomalous, through Late Latin anomalus from the Greek anomalos, literally ‘uneven’, ‘irregular’, from an- ‘not’ + homalos ‘even’, ‘level’). A large proportion of adjectives containing the prefix belong to highly specialized areas of the vocabulary, and new formations in English are scarcely fre­quent enough to justify the inclusion of adjective derivation by means of a-/an- in the repertory of productive morphological processes. In this and similar cases one is faced with a dilemma: on the one hand new formations that gain currency follow an established pattern of compo­sition, on the other hand the number and/or semantic field of these new formations is so margined that it would seem neither reasonable nor accurate to assign to this pattern a status similar to others of less questionable productivity. One might perhaps relegate such marginal processes to a kind of “recognition morphology” which would assign an interpretation to new formations that become established, and treat the process of formation itself as an unpredict­able accident that lies outside the scope of productive grammatical rules.

As for the semantic function of the prefix, it is either negative — apparently generally contradictory — or privative, more or less equivalent to the suffix -less, as for instance in aplacental. The semantic relationships between the non-prefixed adjectives and the prefixed forms are not always predictable. [...] An interesting set of forms is constituted by amoral, immoral, nonmoral and unmoral, where immoral is the contrary opposite of moral on the dimension of mo­rality, but where the precise differences, if any, between amoral, nonmoral and unmoral are not very clear.

When we come to examine the forms in a-/an- in which the prefix has a purely negative rather than a privative function from the point of view of the “positive” or “negative” value of the underlying bases, it must be said that our second hypothesis is borne put quite well. We have not found a single form which could be said to be derived from a negatively evaluated base (this applies, incidentally, both to negatively prefixed forms borrowed in toto and to English new formations). On the other hand it would certainly be wrong to claim, as Jespersen did for the forms in un-, that most of the derived adjectives have a depreciatory sense; most of them are rather clearly, neutral on an evaluative scale. This is hardly surprising in view of the high proportion of scientific terms among them. [...]

4. non-

There can be little doubt that поп- is more productive than the prefixes we have examined so far. The NCD lists only 26 adjectives in поп- with definitions (including such “non-derived” ones as nonchalant, nondescript), but includes a list of about 850 others with the note that “the meanings of the words in the list can be understood from, the definitions of the terms with which поп- is com­bined”. The listing is rather arbitrary (it includes non-Turkish but not non-Bulgarian, nonintuitive but not nondeductive), and it is in fact hard to see what usefulness it has. The same can be said of the listing of non-forms in the NID3 (all of them with definitions, a good many of these of the type non-x: not x); nonwhite is listed, noncolored is not, nonpsychitric is, поnpsychological is not, etc. Where one is dealing with a clearfy productive morphological process, a simple statement of the semantic content of the process in question, which would enable one to interpret new formations, seems to be as much as can or should be expected of a dictionary (together, of course, with a list of attested forms that are semantically specialized or irregular). A listing of semantically, transparent attested forms (which in any case in practice is bound to be incomplete) is hardly less futile than an attempt to count the drops in a pool during a rainstorm. Moreover, it has to some extent the effect of obscuring the fact that the process is synchronically productive.

It is interesting to note that the great majority of non-forms in the dictionary listings have underlying forms which are themselves morphologically complex; most of them end in -al, -ible, -ic, -ous, etc. This may be connected with the fact that many simple adjectives (such as small, long)have obvious simple antonyms; nonred is probably more acceptable than nonlong. The listing in the NCD also includes some double negatives: nondisfranchised, noninfinite, and the noun nondiscontinuance.

As for the semantic function of поп-, the definition of it given by the NCD seems quite satisfactory:

A prefix in common use in the sense of not-, un-, in-, поп- is generally less emphatic than in- or un-, being merely negative, while in- and un- are positive, often implying an opposite thing or quality. Cf. non religious, ir religious; non moral, im mor­al; non - Christian, un christian.

In our terms, поп- generally expresses contradictory oppo­sition, while in- and un- often express contrary opposition. The fact that most derivatives in поп- are not compared and are not modified by very, etc., also supports the in­terpretation of поп- as a contradictory negative.

There is a considerable number of cases where the un- derivative of a given base seems to imply the absence of a desirable or expected quality, while the non - derivative of the same base does not have this implication (e. g. unremunerative vs. nonremunerative). And often the contrast between x and non -xlies as it were along a different dimen­sion from that between x and un -x(or in -x ). Thus the contrast Christian vs. non-Christian appears to be primarily one between ‘related to, pertaining to, characteristic of cer­tain religious doctrines’ and ‘not related to, etc., these doctrines’, while that between Christian and unchristian rather involves a scale of conformity or opposition to certain norms. Comparable contrasts are quite frequent (cf. non-American vs. un-American, non-grammatical vs. ungrammatical). We might say in general that in such cases поп- selects the descriptive aspect of the stem for negation, while un- selects the evaluative one. Moreover, the evaluative aspect thus selected appears to be in general a positive one; in un-Cartesian for instance it would seem that certain praiseworthy features of the meaning of Cartesian are ne­gated, so that un-Cartesian sounds evaluatively negative (as opposed to non-Cartesian).The selection of an evalua­tively positive sense is of course contingent upon the exist­ence of one; it would, be interesting to determine whether derivatives of certain terms which have, for most speak­ers of English, no such “positive” aspect available (e. g. fascist, totalitarian) would generally be considered as to some extent peculiar. We might further note in this connection that for terms such as maternal, which have both an eval­uative and a descriptive aspect, we have two acceptable derivatives (e. g. to take the stem just cited, unmaternal and nonmaternal), while for related terms with a primarily eval­uative —and “positive” —aspect such as motherly the un- derivative is often well-established, while a derivative in поп- seems quite odd (cf. unmotherly and nonmotherly).

As we might expect in view of the foregoing remarks, the great majority of the non-derivatives listed in the NCD have “neutral” underlying stems. A few do have “negative” stems (e. g. nonpalpable, nonmalicious, nonreprehensible), and an approximately equal number have “positive” stems (e. g. nonadvantageous, nonbenevolent, noncommendable). It would seem that we are justified in assuming that the use of поп- is primarily confined to descriptive, i. e. “neutral” terms, or at least to terms which have a possible interpre­tation under which they are evaluatively neutral, and that its use with both “positive” and “negative” terms is rather marginal.

As for a generative account of derivation by means of поп-, this could perhaps best be handled in terms of a “degrees of grammaticalness” approach (or in terms of de­grees of acceptability, it we want to avoid the thorny question of what is more grammatical or less grammatical). We would then have a class of derivatives in поп- for which the underlying stems would have to be specified only so as to insure a minimum degree of acceptability; let us say that we require merely that the stem be an adjective (we are not concerned with non-derivatives of nouns here). There would further be two subclasses of this class of minimally acceptable forms, the members of both of which would all have a higher degree of acceptability; one would be com­posed of the non-derivatives of stems without simplex antonyms, the other one of the поп- derivatives of evaluatively neutral stems. The highest degree of acceptability could then be specified in terms of membership in both of these two subclasses, i. e. of belonging to their intersection. To give some examples, the class of minimally acceptable forms would contain no derivatives less acceptable than nondelicious and nonlong, respectively; and their intersection would contain only fully acceptable forms such as nonelongated. It might be considered whether morphological complexity as such should be specified as a desirable con­dition for derivatives in поп-.

It need hardly be added that our remarks here are only meant as a suggestion for a possible scheme of description. It would be necessary to investigate in much more detail the importance of the two factors we have discussed, and the possible role of other ones, before we could decide whether this outline should be adopted. In any case it is clear that such an approach, if feasible, would constitute a semantic specification of the acceptability of the output of a formal morphological process, for the two subclasses of adjectives that we have suggested above are defined in semantic rather than in grammatical terms.