Semantic Notes on Negative Prefixes in Word Formation in English : The use of unlicensed and non-resident

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  • 英語の語形成における否定接辞に関する意味論ノート : unlicensed とnon-resident を巡って

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This paper is mainly concerned with English negative prefixes such as "a-, dis-, in-, non-, un-" and their behavior in word-formation. The variety of prefixes may appear to be similar because different prefixes can come from different languages such as Latin and Greek. In- and its allomorphs (different forms of the same morpheme) il-/im-/ir, for instance, come from Latin (e.g. illogical, immoral, irrational). Non- stems from old French and Latin, a- from Greek (e.g. asymmetry, atypical), dis- from Latin, and un- from a native English prefix and the most productive one in English today (e.g. unhappy, unaccustomed). Adjectives, nouns, adverbs, and verbs can take some of these prefixes to make them negative, but in this paper, adjectives and those produced from deverbal participial forms are focused, among other things. A student in the class has made a question: why licensed takes un- as its negative form rather than il- (i.e. an allomorph of in-): unlicensed vs.＊illicensed. Similarly, an explanation of why we can say "nonresident owners of the houses "rather than" ♰unresident or ＊ irresident owners of the houses" is provided. The attempt is to challenge these two questions in terms of historical nature related to the negative prefixes and their relative productivity inherent in them. Unfortunately, determining which prefixes to use with which stem is not always predictable. Moreover, the rules on which negative prefix to use when more than one is possible are not absolute. However, we can consider and guess the subtle behavior of prefixes and their meanings in terms of their historical backgrounds in nature and semantic contrast in context.

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