LINGUIST List 3.697

Wed 16 Sep 1992

Disc: Reanalyses

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "George Fowler h(, RE: 3.686 Reanalyses
2. "Eleanor Olds Batchelder, Re: 3.686 Reanalyses
3. Pamela Munro, reanalyses?
4. Michael Everson, Reanalyses

Message 1: RE: 3.686 Reanalyses

My 10-year-old daughter has a curious reanalysis, which has proven quite
resistant to correction (and which is not shared by her 8-year-old
brother). Instead of "supposed to" she regularly says "asposed", with
apparent metathesis of the initial "s" and schwa. I assume this is a
kind of contaminated reanalysis. The reanalysis would be from strings
like "he's supposed to...", where the initial "s" disappears into the
preceding one. This gets the initial schwa. The apparent metathesis,
I hypothesize, comes from contamination with the contracted form without
the schwa, "sposed". She uses her form even when there's no phonological
motivation for losing the initial "s": "He's not asposed to do that."

George Fowler
GFowlerIUBACS.Bitnet
 UCS.Indiana.EDU

Message 2: Re: 3.686 Reanalyses

How about "What we need here is an expertee" (with stress on final syllable),
from 'expertise'? I used to here this when I worked in a corporate setting.

Now seems like a good time to share a wonderful word that is used by many
speakers (most of them probably native speakers of Chickasaw or Choctaw,
but all perfectly fluent in English) I've talked to in Oklahoma. This is
the use of "kindly" to mean "kind of", as in "She's kindly sick" or "He's
kindly having trouble doing it". The first many many times I heard this
I thought I'd heard it wrong, but it is absolutely genuine. As far as I
can determine, these speakers know "kind of" is an adverb and that adverbs
should have -ly, and after all "kindly" is a word anyway (though not, of
course, and adverb). I always get a charge out of hearing this.
-- Pam Munro

I like the verb "misle" /majzl/....
I have been plagued by an orthographic reanalysis I made when I
was about seven. The word /shi:k/ means (or meant when I learned
the word) 'trendy in a sort of elegant or pseudo-elegant way'; so
naturally I associated it with Arab royalty, and assumed that it
was spelt <sheik>. The word /chik/ on the other hand, is 'trendy in
a popular or ephemeral way' (or was when I was 7), and of course,
is spelt, trendily, <chic>. This was a long time before I learned
about French. I still can't decide whether Arab royalty are to be
called /shi:k/ or /shejk/... and chic chicks confuse me no end.

Michael Everson
School of Architecture, UCD, Richview, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14, E/ire
Phone: +353-1-706-2745 Fax: +353-1-283-7778