Adjective opposites Vs. Lingustic Freedom

Question

Hello,A friend and I are having an (friendly) email argument about adjective opposites. He replied to my email by thanking me for the "non-information." I replied by correcting his grammar and soon found myself in the middle of a linguistic argument. I have done some research on the internet, but I have never taken any linguistic courses. I was wondering if anyone could help me counter his argument. As it is not particularly personal, I have pasted a portion of his last reply below:try googling it.  noninformative priors,  it has been used in stats for 40+years.  Nice use of the dictionary, prescriptivist.  Simply because it does notappear in the dictionary does not mean it is an incorrect english utterance.I guess wiki or blog aren't english either... Or any recent slang, face ityou can't win the argument.  All living languages are in a constant state offlux.  If a competent english speaker make an utterance that is understoodby other competent english speakers, then well its english. Your stance is a really old fashioned linguistic theory, like 1800's old,and has been completely discredited by all modern linguistic theory,beginning say from the turn of the 1900's.  The rule you are citing is anarbitrary stylistic rule and can be broke and be understandable.  Comparethat creation of a rule to one that stems from the deep grammer of alanguage which cannot be broke and maintain intelligibility.  Consider'There is no need to notify us about problems that we are already aware of',ending a sentence with a participle versus "ran car do after You".  Theformer although 'wrong (arbitarily, it stems from an unbreakable rule inLatin)' is understandable, the latter is nonsense. Next you'll tell me that the utterance 'Eat yet?"  isn't a correct englishutterance.Thanks in advance for any advice,Eric.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

His spelling and vocabulary could use some brushing up, but his argument is sound.  What stylistic 'rule' did you quote?

Anonymous · Answer

Hi Mister Micawber,

Here was my friends original use of the word:

Thanks for the article about Russia and the fairly non-informative email.

To which I replied with some light-hearted taunting:

...Also, the proper antonym of informative is uninformative. If we venture too *****-nilly into the world of adjective opposites we could end up with such awkward words as:

dislegal

unlogical

iltrue

dismature

imlogical

...and many more terrible variations.

And this stylistic rule:

Adjectival Opposites

The opposite or the negative aspect of an adjective can be formed in a number of ways. One way, of course, is to find an adjective to mean the opposite — an antonym. The opposite of beautiful is ugly, the opposite of tall is short. A thesaurus can help you find an appropriate opposite. Another way to form the opposite of an adjective is with a number of prefixes. The opposite of fortunate is unfortunate, the opposite of prudent is imprudent, the opposite of considerate is inconsiderate, the opposite of honorable is dishonorable, the opposite of alcoholic is nonalcoholic, the opposite of being properly filed is misfiled. If you are not sure of the spelling of adjectives modified in this way by prefixes (or which is the appropriate prefix), you will have to consult a dictionary, as the rules for the selection of a prefix are complex and too shifty to be trusted. The meaning itself can be tricky; for instance, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.

(The above paragraph was taken from this website: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm )

Thanks for the advice,

Eric

Anonymous · Answer

You're right that you can't make up words by prefixing "dis" or "un"
to existing adjectives. I mean you can do, but no one else may accept your word.

There are productive processes for forming adjectives, and prefixing "non" is one of them. I think his point is that prefixing "dis" or "un" in the ways you suggest are just not done. It's not a question of proper or improper. It just doesn't happen. There's no need to worry about venturing *****-nilly into a world where rules aren't followed, because language doesn't work like that.

But prefixing "non" does happen, and it forms words that might already have another form - for instance "nonimformative" (110 000 hits on google) and "uninformative" (1090 hits).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_and_description

Adjective opposites Vs. Lingustic Freedom

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