What exactly is different between "outspoken"/"softspoken" and "unspoken"/"misspoken"?
My brain completely misinterprets the last 2 of these words every time I read them:
When I hear X is "unspoken", I interpret it to mean nobody speaks about X.
When I hear X is "misspoken", I interpret it to mean that people say X by mistake.
When I hear X is "outspoken", I interpret it as meaning that X is spoken of (or X does speaks) but the speech tends to be drowned out by others' voices.
When I hear X is "softspoken", I interpret it as meaning that people tend to speak "softly" of X.
Yet somehow, it seems the first two are correct, but the last two are wrong.
Heck, the first two apply to things, whereas the last two seem to apply to people.
In the first two cases, X is the subject of the sentence, but in the last two, it is the object.
Shouldn't the consistent usage and the "-en" conjugation mean X is the subject?
From a language standpoint, what exactly is different about these that makes their meanings so seemingly ambiguous grammatically?
Solution 1:
What's involved here is a tension between transitive and intransitive uses of the past participle spoken.
Ordinarily a past participle employed as an adjective has a passive sense: the noun modified is the object of the verb, subject of the passive construction:
John did not speak Mary's name, but everyone knew who he was talking about.
Mary's name was not spoken.
Mary's name was unspoken.
Only the past participles of transitive verbs can be employed this way, because only transitive verbs have objects and only transitive verbs can be passivized.
Consequently, the past participles of intransitive verbs are rarely used as adjectives; but there's a handful which are, and in these cases the participle has an active and usually perfective sense.
A widely travelled woman is not a woman who "has been travelled" widely, because travel is used transitively only of places, not of persons; she is a woman who has travelled widely.
A risen dough is not a dough which "has been risen", because rise is intransitive (the transitive version is raise); it is a dough which ****has risen***.
Speak has both transitive and intransitive uses: one may speak a speech or a word AND one may simply "speak", loudly or softly or out or of a topic. And the compounds you adduce employ the participle in different senses:
- Unspoken is a passive use—the entity modified is not spoken.
- There's a verb misspeak which is almost always used intransitively—"When I said that I misspoke"—so in theory the participle would be employed as an active; but I've never actually seen misspoken employed as an adjectival in any sense, and I would be considerably more surprised to find it used actively than passively.
- Outspoken derives from speak out; this is usually intransitive, and in fact the adjective means "given to speaking out", often with the implication that what is said is injudicious or ill-considered.
- Soft-spoken derives from speak soft(ly), intransitive, and means "given to speaking softly" rather than loudly or harshly.
Solution 2:
All four describe the manner in which something is spoken:
- unspoken criticism
- misspoken criticism
- outspoken criticism
- softspoken criticism
The latter pair can further be used to describe individuals who habitually speak in the stipulated manner, as you've noticed: similarly, we have plainspoken, free-spoken, well-spoken, and loud-spoken, among others.
Misspoken and unspoken in contrast, are the past participles of the verbs misspeak and unspeak, respectively, and are not extensible, as with forespoken and respoken, among others. All of these verbs save the first are archaic/literary/obsolete today, however.
Solution 3:
I have been trying to work out the best way to answer this and although there are exceptions, these are the general patterns for the words you indicate that you have problems with.
out— words
An outspoken person maybe speaks out about something they believe in
An outreach worker maybe someone who reaches out to help.
A movie outtake is a scene which a director takes out of the movie.
soft— words
These are descriptive words which are opposite to hard- words and...
A soft-spoken person will have speech which is soft in comparison to a hard-spoken person.
A soft-coated dog will have fur which is soft compared to a hard-coated dog
A soft-hearted person will have a temperament which is soft compared to a hardhearted person
A soft-centred sweet will have a centre which is soft compared to a hard-centred.
The only exception I can think of at this time is soft-boiled which refers to an egg which is boiled but the yolk is soft and runny compared to a hard-boiled egg which isn't soft and runny at all.
Solution 4:
unspoken is a word from the late 14th century, likely derived from Dutch/German roots, while outspoken is of Scottish origin, from around 1800. Entirely different times and cultures produced the two words.