Consonant substitution? - Wordsmith.org

Well, metathesis is rather easy to look up. And, for those who are not about to click, here's a short definition: "Transposition within a word of letters, sounds, or syllables, as in the change from Old English brid to modern English bird or in the confusion of modren for modern." [A-H] As nearly anybody can see from that quoted definition, metathesis it ain't.

tsu: Thank you for that as I never would have thought of using OneLook

More to the point:
metathesis intitle:synonyms
gets 100 GHits

Try it

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Well, metathesis is rather easy to look up. And, for those who are not about to click, here's a short definition: "Transposition within a Wword of letters, sounds, or syllables, as in the change from Old English brid to modern English bird or in the confusion of modren for modern." [A-H] As nearly anybody can see from that quoted definition, metathesis it ain't.

What is it, then, Nuncle? As I suggested in my first post, "metathesis" may be too specific for what Max wants, since there's no switching of consecutive sounds involved. Or has the term become somewhat broader these days, AHD notwithstanding? In which case your subtle subject line would indeed be an example thereof? Huh? Huh??

(I kinda like "anticipatory assimilation" my own sef)

Faldo's anticipatory assimilation works well enough for me. There's a kind of assimilation at a distance in Hungarian and Turkish called vowel harmony, and there's even a Wikipedia entry for consonant harmony. In assimilation, the sound don't just change, it becomes more like one it's assimilating to. There's also dissimilation, where two sounds are alike, and one changes so as to be less alike. You see this in Romance languages where there might be two rs in a Latin word in adjacent syllables, and one dissimilates to an l. (I'll try to find an example later this evening.)

Yes! Mr von Fong came up with an example of that in Spanish: inmoral. I'd love to see other examples. I don't think dissimilation occurs in Port.

You have to be at sea?

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You have to be at sea?

With you, TEd, I usually am at sea...

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tsu: Thank you for that as I never would have thought of using OneLook

More to the point:
metathesis intitle:synonyms
gets 100 GHits

Try it

why would I want to? onelook is a better tool for the purpose; but if I was truly stuck on googling, I'd try "define metathesis" or "thesaurus metathesis". the first page of hits should get me anything I need.

During my commute to work this morning, I remembered the classic case of assimilation in Romance: Engish pilgrim from Old French peligrin from Late Latin pelegrinus from Latin peregrinus 'foreigner' (cf Italian pelegrino). Here the two rs are in different syllables. Another example of anticipatory assimilation is umlaut in Germanic languages (e.g., man ~ men, foot ~ feet :- the umlaut is because the low or mid vowel is assimilating to the high front vowel which then disappeared in the final syllable (i.e., the plural ending). Umlaut also appears in other languages, e.g., Ligurian Italian dialects, man ~ moen 'hand(s)', can ~ chen 'dog(s).

[Added following text.]

I found a nice lecture on language change at the UPenn linguistics website. Mark Liberman of Language Log is teaching the class.

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I found a nice lecture on language change at the UPenn linguistics website. Mark Liberman of Language Log is teaching the class.

Grazie, zio.

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Yes! Mr von Fong came up with an example of that in Spanish: inmoral. I'd love to see other examples. I don't think dissimilation occurs in Port.

My first thought on this was that, e.g., inmoral was the original so that it was not an example of dissimilation, but in this and other inm- examples from Spanish the assimilation had already occurred in the Latin. I'd have some trouble believing that this was a learned conceit, not unlike the s in English island or the b in doubt, so perhaps it is dissimilation. Any thoughts on that, nuncle?

Grazie, zio.

Prego, nipote.

I'd have some trouble believing that this was a learned conceit, not unlike the s in English island or the b in doubt, so perhaps it is dissimilation.

It's a good question. It's either--as you suggest--dissimilation or some kind of learned retro-etymological restructuring. My library is in upheaval (shelves moved and such), but I looked quickly in Men�ndez Pidal's Or�genes del Espa�ol (which I did find), but didn't see anything apropos. I'll ask around.

It's only inm- words in Spanish. I did a little browse through my diccionario usual and found e.g., ilegal, imposible, and imbecilidad. It might could be just the Spanish disinclination to use double letters except where they represent a different sound as in ll, rr or cc where the second c is followed by an i or e but that doesn't explain why not, e.g., imortal. And we also have such words as innegable.

Go figure.

tsu: '...or "thesaurus metathesis". ' Thank you, I will try that

Er... the negative prefix in Spanish is "in-", so derivations such as "inmoral", "innegable", "intranquilo", "incorregible", "indecente", "inquieto", "ingobernable" are merely following the grammatical pattern. There is no dissimilation here.

A special case, as with many other languages, is that of the liquid consonants "r" and "l", which often modify preceding sounds. Because of the presence of these sounds we get words like "ilegal" and "irregular", where what happens is, in fact, assimilation of "in-", where the "n" disappears. In "irregular" the double consonant appears so that the lexeme "regular" can retain its initial-"r" sound, which is strongly rolled, as opposed to mid-word "r" which is softer. In the case of "ilegal", the "n" simply disappears.

And finally, the other case for exception to the rule is that of the combination "np" and "nb", which in Spanish is always "mp" and "mb" (the "n" sound becomes a bilabial in order to be closer to the "p" and "b"). It is a rule of spelling, so it doesn't only happen with the prefix "in-", but in every other instance too.

However, I'd like to propose the concept of "euphonic assimilation" for the inital question in this thread. I guess it's more or less what y'all were proposing, but I kinda like the name...

I really hope I explained myself adequately above (and I hope I'm saying something relevant); if not, do ask me to clarify and I'll do my best.

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Er... the negative prefix in Spanish is "in-", so derivations such as "inmoral", ... are merely following the grammatical pattern. There is no dissimilation here.

As Faldage tried to point out, "immortal-", etc. pre-existed Spanish in Latin, to come back to "inmortal-" seems to re-inventing the square wheel. (^_^)

I spoke with a friend who is a linguistics professor. She's says that forms like inmoral are just plan old dissimilation, and not some kind of learned reverse engineering. (As both Myridon and Faldo say, the Latin forms, showing assimilation of n to m, preceed the Spanish ones.) She's not sure when it took place, but it precedes the composition of El Cid. (She did research on early Spanish phonology.)

It would have to be after the split of Spanish and Portuguese, unless Portuguese re-assimilated them.

Whatever happened, the words home and hone have very different meanings and substituting hone for home has completely changed the meaning of the phrase.
I think sloppy enunciation or mis-hearing may have been responsible.
To "home in on" meand to go directly to the point of a matter.
"To hone in on" makes no sense because hone means a stone, a whetstone, whine or pine for, grumble, moan, and as a 4th definition on Shorter OED as : sharpen on a whetsone ,sharpen, streamline, focus.
That sound you hear, dear MaxQ, is the sound of standards crashing all around us!

Therein lies the better assessment. Rather than assuming the apologist role, the more cynical [and we all know who they are] are more inclined to ascribe some aberrations to dialects such as Hillbilly. They need not be driven by an inability to articulate. One might consider the possibility that the source is merely a dearth of coherent thought.

The bungler of speech cares little that an utterance makes no sense, perhaps considering it a "mute point".

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as a 4th definition on Shorter OED as : sharpen on a whetsone ,sharpen, streamline, focus.
That sound you hear, dear MaxQ, is the sound of standards crashing all around us!

Sorry, WOW, you just shot yourself in the foot by conceding that the dictionary lists "focus" as a defintion of "hone". Then there's the obvious mental link in the "hone in on", with its imagery of sharpening, pointing, etc. I am, however, far too nice to say that your argument is nice.

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Whatever happened, the words home and hone have very different meanings and substituting hone for home has completely changed the meaning of the phrase.

What's good about good-bye?

'Honing Pidgin' One of the best I've seen!

(Though this whole thread is full of good ones!)

inmoral

My friend just sent me a followup on dissimilation in Spanish with another prefix: "I completely forgot to add the words with the prefix cum- 'with,' which include the pleonastic conmigo 'with me' from cum- + mecum! There are 38 such words [in the Diccionario de la lengua espa�ola de la Real Academia Espa�ola], such as conmutar 'commute' (a sentence, not commute to work) and conmover 'move to pity.'"

(Edit: the things you find via Wikipedia: DRAE online.)

Right, sorry, I thought y'all were referring to contemporary Spanish when I made my comment. I don't know that much about Latin-to-Spanish linguistic change.

If you're checking out the DRAE online, take a look at the Diccionario panhisp�nico de dudas on the same site. It's brilliant for those word questions one never seems to be able to settle.

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If you're checking out the DRAE online, take a look at the Diccionario panhisp�nico de dudas on the same site. It's brilliant for those word questions one never seems to be able to settle.

The Dudes' Panhispanic Dictionary?! I'm in!

Um, can I ask a question having to do with the original post?

I've never heard "hone in on" only "home in on" as in to take bearings until you figure out the location of what you are looking for.

Is that what you meant Max?

In reality, it's not a linguistic shift. It's IGNORANCE dammit.

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In reality, it's not a linguistic shift. It's IGNORANCE dammit.

Surely you mean "damn it"?

Nah, he meant "Dam it!", as in "STOP the ignorance!"

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In reality, it's not a linguistic shift. It's IGNORANCE dammit.

This is an inportant[sic] point.