Negativeprefixes“un-”and“non-”

朱田田 王華瑞

【Abstract】In English，there are negative prefixes as “a-，ab-，anti-，counter-，de-，dis-，il-，im-，in-，ir-，mal-，mis-，non-，un- and etc.Among them，we are often confused about the usage of “un-” and “non-”.According to the work the distinctive semantic features between un- and non-，there are three main points helping us distinguish them：different concepts，different tone and emotion，and different meanings of antonyms.Based on these three points，the article is going to analyze the third distinction：different meanings of antonyms.

【Key words】negative prefixes;usage;distinction

【中圖分類號】G633.41 【文獻標識碼】A 【文章編號】2095-3089（2019）19-0-01

According to what we have acquired and a common phenomenon in life and especially on the basis the corpus，we can learn that “non” is mostly used in those contradictory antonyms and those complementary antonyms.Contradictory antonyms，as mentioned in the text book，refer to pair words with absolutely opposite relation，allowing no other terms to be inserted between them.In this field，we have the words like “nonprofit” （an organization or an action only have two states—profit or not for profit），“nonexistent” （if something is not existent，then it is nonexistent without having the third choice），and also words like nontraditional，nonviolent and so on listed in the Picture One which implies a relationship of either this or that.

Picture One

As for relational antonyms which denoting a reciprocal relationship，a word is complementary to other related words in the context of a semantic field（Liang Jinxiang 1999）.For example，noncommercial affairs might refer to political，economical，cultural，military，commercial or financial affairs.

As stated by Rochelle Lieber in his work Introducing Morphology，there are three rules for “un-”：attach un-to an adjective or to a verb;un- attaches to adjectives meaning “X” and produces adjectives meaning “not X” and un- attaches to adjectives，preferably those with neutral or positive connotations，and creates negative adjectives.（Rochelle Lieber 2009） These three rules might also be applied to “non-”，however，there are major differences in the aspect of creating an antonym.Relatively speaking，the prefix “un-” is more likely to modify those words denoting gradable antonyms by and large.It cant modify those two categories mentioned above.In this respect，words like “unusual” （we can say quite unusual） and “unhappy” （we may say unhappier than yesterday） are available.

References

[1]梁錦祥.否定形容詞與前綴IN-、UN-、NON-[J].外語與外語教學，1999（10）：14-18，65.

[2]Rochelle Lieber.Introducing Morphology[M].the United States of America：Cambridge University Press，2009：65.

作者簡介：朱田田（1997）、女、漢族，浙江紹興、浙江師范大學外國語學院。