Unuses

[Amorelli]

Thankyou for your extensive response which certainly gives food for thought.
Can I share it with my students?  My edition of the work (Penguin Books,
publ. 1989) has on page 315 : "In addition, any word -this [..] applied in
principle to every word in the language - could be negatived by adding the
affix un-, or could be strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still
greater emphasis, doubleplus-." However, the author gives no example, either
here in the Appendix, or indeed in the story itself, of these affixes on
verbs.
As for 'unsee', I remember having to do 'unseens' during my Classics
studies. These were translations done 'cold', as it were, i.e. never seen
before the examination itself. My problem :)) was with '[...]site' rather
than sight, or 'sait'

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2005 1:27 AM
Subject: Re: Unuses

> I'm pretty sure Newspeak only generalizes "un-" for adjectives, where
> it is used productively to replace "negative" contraries:  "ungood"
> for "bad", "unstrong" for "weak", "doubleplusungood" for "very bad",
> etc.  Curiously, although I'm not sure Orwell was aware of it,
> Newspeak in this respect precisely mirrors earlier stages of English:
> ================
> There is...considerable restriction in the use of un- with short
> simple adjectives of native origin, the negative of these being
> naturally supplied by another simple word of an opposite
> signification.  There is thus little or no tendency now to employ
> such forms as unbroad, undeep, unwide, unbold, unglad, ungood,
> unstrong, unwhole, [etc.] which freely occur in the older language.
> (OED, un- 1, 7; the same general asymmetry (described by Jespersen,
> Zimmer, and others) evidently obtained in the "older language" as in
> Newspeak in that no adjectives of the form "unbad", "unweak",
> "unnarrow" are attested.)
>
> But I'm pretty sure Orwell didn't generalize this to verbs.  On the
> other hand, earlier English--through Middle and Early Modern
> Eng.--lacked the aspectual constraint on un-verbs we now do, so it in
> fact allowed verbs like "unbe", "unbetide" ('not to happen'),
> "untrusten", "uncomprehend", "unbecome".  There's apparently no
> "unhave" as such--but the OED does include one nonce occurrence of
> "unhaving" coupled with "unknowing":
>
> 1449 PECOCK Repr. I. xvi. 89 For harme which y haue knowen come bi
> defaut and the vnhauying and the vnknowing of this..consideracioun.
>
> But I have to admit that the replacement of "lack" with "unhave", as
> below, does seem to be in the spirit if not the letter of Newspeak.
>
> Larry
>
> P.S.  There are a handful of cites for "unsee", but it's not like the
> "unsite" below, a simple 'not to see', but rather the standard
> change-of-state meaning we get with modern "unwrap", "unsay",
> "unhappen":
>
> 1865 J. GROTE Explor. Philos. I. 243 We cannot unsee the prospect before
> us.
> 1871 KINGSLEY At Last xvii, At last we had seen it; and we could not unsee
> it.
>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Ed Keer" <edkeer at YAHOO.COM>
>>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 9:56 PM
>>Subject: Unuses
>>
>>>---------------------- Information from the mail
>>>header -----------------------
>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Poster:       Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM>
>>>Subject:      Unuses
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>I have a friend who works at a well known news
>>>organization. He says that they use "unsite" and
>>>"unhave" as verbs in written communications about
>>>stories:
>>>
>>>"Unhave India-Tsunami, pls resend." means "I don't
>>>have the India-Tsunami story, please resend it."
>>>
>>>"Unsite" means something like, "I don't see..."
>>>
>>>I don't think anyone ever uses them when speaking, but
>>>these sound awful to me. Has anyone ever talked about
>>>this?
>>>
>>>Ed
>>>
>>>
>>>
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