Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 12:51:34 -0500
<br>From:    Mark Mandel <Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM>
<br>Subject: (in)flammable
<br>
<br>Victoria Neufeldt <vneufeldt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM> writes:
<br> >>>
<br>Probably any native speaker of English would understand 'inflammable' correctly,
<br> but there is a distinct possibility that a
<br>non-native speaker could misinterpret the 'in-' as a negative prefix, since that
<br> is by far the more common use of this
<br>element; and because the consequences of misinterpretation are potentially
<br> lethal, it is important to use an unambiguous
<br>form, such as 'flammable,' for all public labels.  This "campaign," which isn't
<br> just Australian, but at least North American
<br>(both Canada and US) and British as well, does seem to have been successful. 
<br> Even in everyday language,
<br>'inflammable' is not nearly as common as it used to be.
<br> <<<
<br>
<br>I'm not nearly as confident as Victoria is about "any native speaker of
<br> English". In general, negative "in-" is much more
<br>common than inchoative (or any other) "in-"; and in specific, the very success
<br> that she speaks of in the last two
<br>sentences quoted makes it more likely that "inflammable" will be interpreted as
<br> productively derived from "flammable", and
<br>therefore with the more frequent negative "in-".
<br>
<br>       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
<br>    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
<br> 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
<br>           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
<br>