unrUng, etc. and googling

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:06 AM -0500 11/28/07, Barnhart wrote:
>I find the Google stuff interesting but almost irrelevant.  The numbers
>get so large some times my head spins and it takes a while to unspin.
>
>In a more manageable resource, Nexis, I find:
>
>unring ....... 169 articles
>unringing...   20 articles
>unrung......   46 articles
>unringable ..   7 articles
>unrang ......    0 articles
>unringer ....    0 articles
>

While I'm on record as supporting the inclusion of "unring", I think
it's only fair to note on behalf of Ron and other skeptics that the
adjectival formations in themselves are inconclusive, since they
might (depending on what the context shows) sustain an analysis along
the lines of un[[ring [able] or un[[ring[ing] rather than
[un[ring]]able, [un[ring]]ing, in which case no verb "unring" would
be involved.  Same for "unrung":  an unrung bell might be one that
hasn't rung (or been rung), rather than one that someone tried to
unring.

LH

>For just a little more realistic perspective, all of them came up in the
>spell-checker along with unspin..
>
>Regards,
>David
>
>barnhart at highlands.com
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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