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Grazie, zio.
Prego, nipote.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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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 Menéndez Pidal's Orígenes del Español (which I did find), but didn't see anything apropos. I'll ask around.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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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.
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Pooh-Bah
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tsu: '...or "thesaurus metathesis". ' Thank you, I will try that
dalehileman
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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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Quote:
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. (^_^)
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.)
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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It would have to be after the split of Spanish and Portuguese, unless Portuguese re-assimilated them.
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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.
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!
Last edited by wow; 01/25/07 06:56 PM.
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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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