LINGUIST List 4.725

Mon 20 Sep 1993

Disc: Metathesis

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Directory

1. TERRY IRONS, Re: 4.720 Y'all
2. "Leslie Z. Morgan", metathesis
3. MARC PICARD, From y'all to metathesis to...

Message 1: Re: 4.720 Y'all

 In the recent colloquy on yall, Dennis Baron states that
adder derives from nadder through a process of metathesis. I do
not have my Pyles & Algeo at hand to check the word they use to
describe this instance, but I can tell you that this process is
not metathesis. Metathesis is the permutation of the order of
sounds in a word, as in "ask" derived from Anglo-Saxon "aksian,"
which occurs in Black English as the historically correct form,
let me aks you a question. Here error recapitulates history.

 Big scale: It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.

 The process to which Baron alludes is morphological
reanalysis. The phrase a+nadder is reanalyzed as an+adder.

 On the subject of plural you forms, in my continuing
distrust of the dialect methods of Carver, I wonder if we
might distinguish three dialects of English based on such
plurals: youguys (N), youuns (M), yall (S).

Terry Lynn Irons
Morehead State University
email: t.ironsmsuacad.morehead-st.edu

A quick response to the "a nadder" vs. "an adder"- I thought
this was concretion of the article. Metathesis would be
thesaurum ==> tresor, where the 'r' migrated-- or are there
other definitions??
Leslie Morgan

 In his diatribe against prescriptivism, Dennis Baron refers to the
change of A NADDER to AN ADDER as metathesis, which it ain't. Now in French
this type of misdivision is called "deglutination" (with AN EKENAME > A NICK-
NAME being an instance of "agglutination") but I've never seen or heard that
 term used in English.
 Can anybody tell us if there IS an English term for this type of change?Marc
 Picard