De-gaying

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:02 PM -0500 3/8/04, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>
>         >>>
>As for "de-rice", the innovator was my (non-linguist) wife, and the
>object was my daughter--this was a while ago, as the same
>daughter--now home on college break--has been just fine with her rice
>distribution for quite some time.
>         <<<
>
>It's productive. No one has mentioned "debug" yet (OED 1945 in the
>common current sense [or an obvious immediate ancestor]).
>
>But this use with "gay" is an extension. I like it.
>
>... Ah. OED says "de-" was used similarly in Latin(1), and shows
>longstanding denominal use in English(2).
>
>s.v. de-, prefix:

The entry below exemplifies the not infrequent deleterious effects of
the non-theoretical approach of the OED, which leads to a conflation
of different patterns here and elsewhere.  An item like
"de-legitimation" is not a denominal verb, but a nominalized
de-verbal ("delegitimate", akin to modern "delegitimize").  But the
other examples look like true denominals.  Both "de-" and "un-" can
be used for forming denominal verbs, but the general pattern is that
the latter can be used more freely when the corresponding unprefixed
verb has an independent existence, even one with the same meaning
("unworm" a puppy, "unskin" an orange).  While un- can form un-nouns,
un-verbs, and of course un-adjectives, but in each case it tends to
leave the part of speech unaffected (nouns from nouns, etc.).
"Debug" is more natural than "unbug" because there's no verb "to bug"
in the relevant sense, and similarly for "de-stale" and "de-gay".
Compare these recent pop song with productive reversative un-verb
formations based on verbs:

(1)
Un-break my heart
Say you'll love me again
Undo this hurt you caused
When you walked out the door
And walked outta my life
Un-cry these tears
I cried so many nights
========
(2)
You can't uncry the tears that you've cried
You can't unshoot that gun
You can't unlive the life that you've lived
(You gotta go on, go on)

Larry Horn


>
>(1) [The long vowels are displayed in OED OnLine with graphics that
>don't paste and I don't have the time to type them all in again.]
>
>In Latin, de- had also the function of undoing or reversing the action
>of a verb, e.g. armre to arm, dearmre to disarm, decorre to grace,
>ddecorre to disgrace, jungre to join, djungre to unyoke, vlre to veil,
>dvlre to unveil, and of forming verbs of similar type from substantives,
>as dearture to dismember, from artus member, joint, dcollre to behead,
>from collum neck, dcorticre to deprive of bark, from corticem bark,
>dflrre to rob of its flowers, from flrem flower.
>
>(2)
>    2. Less frequently verbs (and their derivatives) are formed by
>prefixing de- to a noun (cf. L. dfmre, F. défroquer), with the sense:
>a. To deprive, divest, free from, or rid of the thing in question: as
>DEBOWEL (1375), deflesh, defoliage, deglaze, deglycerin, dehandle,
>delawn, demast, demiracle, demonastery, depark, deprivilege,
>deprotestant, detenant, detruth; depetticoated, dereligioned ppl. adjs.;
>de-legitimation.
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>    Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania