LINGUIST List 3.720

Wed 23 Sep 1992

Disc: Reanalyses (Part 1)

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1. Pamela Munro, reanalyses
2. , reanalyses
3. , Re: 3.714 Reanalyses: An irrelevant apropos
4. Henry Rogers, Re: 3.714 Reanalyses
5. John Dingley, Reanalyses
6. , reanalyses
7. Dennis Baron, reanalysis

(1) Garland Bills, Dennis Preston, Janine Scancarelli, and David Stampe
(I hope that's all) responded to my comment about the use of "kindly" for
"kind of". The consensus is that this is a widespread southern phenomenon
(hypotheses included general southern, South Midland, Apalachian, and Ozark).
I should note that I mentioned that I'd heard this primarily (only?) from
my Chickasaw and Choctaw consultants for precision, not because I assumed
there was any connection between their native language and this development.

(2) I'd like to comment on Christine Kamprath's question about Kemo Sabe
here, because I think another possibility is of some general interest. (I
can't judge the likelihood of the Portuguese suggestion). Tonto may have
been a Tonto Apache. These Indians are connected with a group known as
the Yavapai Apaches, who in turn are connected with the Yavapais, a tribe
of Indians in central Arizona who speak a Yuman language completely (even
for Greenberg!) unrelated to Apache (which is Athabascan). Two of my
colleages who work on Yavapai, Alan Shaterian and Martha B. Kendall (neither
of whom, I believe, gets LINGUIST), came up with the theory that Kemo
Sabe derives from Yavapai k-nymsav-e (accent on a; insert as many schwas
as you need for pronunciation; subject relativizer k- plus nymsav 'white'
plus nominalizing vowel) 'white one', i.e. 'white man'. Kendall wrote a
piece about this etymology for Smithsonian magazine maybe 10 years ago.
It's a very cute idea, but I do wonder how the Lone Ranger people came
up with this word!

 Pam Munro

Seen at the local grocery store: "grown without pestasides"
(pesticides ---> pest + aside + s)

Message 3: Re: 3.714 Reanalyses: An irrelevant apropos

De Reuse's example:

>In the Latin Pater Noster or Lord's Prayer, he heard:
>sicut et nos dimikimus debitoribus nostris. (instead of dimittimus)
>[miki mus] was the local Flemish pronunciation for Mickey Mouse.
>Such mishearings are, I would think, reinforced by a child's desperate
>attempt to make some sense of something quite obscure.

made me remember a story which illustrates how the place of an obscure text
within a familiar ritual may provide "meaning" enough, without desperate
attempts at analysis. A Catholic priest tells me that shortly after the
Catholic Church in Norway switched from Latin to Norwegian liturgy, a
little boy was overheard in church asking his older sister (English playing
the role of Norwegian here):

 - What does 'and with Thy spirit' really mean?

The sister replied promptly:

 - Don't you understand that, stupid? It means 'et cum spiritu tuo'!

Helge Dyvik

Message 4: Re: 3.714 Reanalyses

Planter's warts for plantar warts seems to have prevailed completely.
I have never heard anyone other than a medical person or a linguist
say plantar warts, and then they have usually restressed the vowel of the
second syllable from schwa to /a/.
--

Henry Rogers			rogersepas.utoronto.ca

Department of Linguistics
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 1A1				vox:	(416)-978-1769
Canada				fax:	(416)-978-8821

A habit I have never really been able to break, even when on my best
linguistic behaviour, is to say "a MIND of information" for "a MINE of
information". Barbarous as that might be, surely information has more to
do with the MIND than with a bloody MINE anyway!
Yours philistinely, John Dingley <jdingleyvm1.yorku.ca>

At the risk of beating a dead horse... When I was in college I
was taking a Greek mythology and a Greek civ. class in addition
to a biology class. I remember reading my biology textbook one
day and coming upon the word "herbicides." However, I
was reading it directly after one fo my Greek classes and I read
the word as "her-BI-ci-des" (rhymes with Euripides
figure out who this Herbicides was! And why was he in my bio
book? I had a good laugh when I "camme to."

Susan Scheiberg

Herb Stahlke's mention of _viaduct_ brings to mind the classic
Groucho shtick, "Why a duck?" It's a doggy-dog world seems to
have become a staple; I trace it back to Richard Lederer's
original piece in _Verbatim_, "A History of the World According
to Student Bloopers."

Two common reanlyses are _wreck havoc_ from _wreak havoc_,
and _wind one's way_ from _wend ...._

I seem to forget a lot, and one day my 9 year old daughter
said to me, "Daddy, I think you've got Oldtimer's Disease."

And I know quite a few children who reanalyzed the _you_ in
certain phrases: both our younger kids in response to
"Do you want me to carry you?" would say, "Carry you, Mommy."
And in response to "I'm going to put you to bed now".
"No, Daddy putyou."