UN-words

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:30 PM -0400 10/29/03, sagehen wrote:
>  Larry Horn writes:
>>   Your
>>"unquote" is a bit different, because I'm not quite sure how to
>>describe it's category when used in metalinguistic contexts like
>>"He's a quote linguist unquote" or "He's a quote unquote linguist".
>>(The AHD lists it as a noun, but I'm not sure I agree.)
>~~~~~~~~~
>On the face of it, quote/unquote looks to be functionally equivalent to
>do/undo:  doesn't sound like a noun to me.  (I was NOT going to call
>attention to your "it's" but I see you've already blushed.)

that i have.

I don't think of "unquote" as a verb either, though, since I can't
use it in contexts like "I unquoted his remarks" but only as in the
context above.  In one of the papers of mine that I mentioned, I
briefly discuss "unitalics" and "unbold", which are somewhat
analogous to "unquote" in serving as free-standing metalinguistic
commands.  I think there is a derivative use of "unbold" and
"unquote" as verbs (although I'm not sure how that would work with
"unitalics"):  I told the copy-editor to unbold and unquote that
passage.  (i.e. to remove the boldface and the quote marks)   Again,
though, that's different from the "quote-unquote-linguist" above.



Larry