Re: Two different opposites
From: | Joe <joe@...> |
Date: | Monday, January 12, 2004, 17:56 |
Gary Shannon wrote:
>It's interesting that there can sometimes be more than
>one "opposite" to a word. While I was atempting to
>discover which verb roots are necessary and which can
>be formed by a negating prefix on the root, I noticed
>that I need two different negating prefixes, one for
>"un" and one for "not".
>
>
Well, 'not'(on verbs) does not oppose, but makes things
absent(linguistic term for this?), whereas un- makes things opposite.
On the other hand, on adjectives, they are identical, making things
absent or opposite, depending on the adjective in question. There is,
however, a third possibility is some things, and in some, it's not even
included into English.
For instance, we have 'welcome' 'unwelcome', and 'neither welcome nor
unwelcome'. I suggest a new prefix 'en-'. For instance 'enfast' means
'not fast', but 'unfast' means 'slow'.
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