Soonest = as soon as

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:47 AM -0500 8/21/07, Landau, James wrote:
>...
>OT:  If anyone wants, I have a cite of "prepone" from 1978 written by
>someone who lived in Rhode Island and probably was a native of the US.
>

I don't doubt it.  My claim was that it's a lexical item in Indian
(and only in) English.  That's compatible with nonce coinages in
other varieties, and I'm sure it happens quite a lot, as with other
instances of semi-productive morphology (compare the back-formation
in "contraceive" = 'to practice contraception' or the innovative use
of un-nouns such as "the un-Rumsfeld" (for Gates)).

LH

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