metanalysis
Nov. 17th, 2021 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordmetanalysis (met-uh-NAL-uh-sis) - n., (linguistics) a shift in the division between words in a phrase.
Or more generally, a reanalysis of the division between sounds or words resulting in different constituents. Classic examples in English include the shift from a napron to an apron and from an ewt to a newt (so, yes, that confusion has gone both ways). It also sometimes happens during imports from another language: when Arabic al-lāzuward, lapis lazuli, was adopted in Old French, the Europeans assumed the sound of the second l was part of the definite article al- and turned it into (the ancestor of) azure. Coined in 1913 in Danish by linguist Otto Jesperson, and brought over into English a translation published the next year.
---L.
Or more generally, a reanalysis of the division between sounds or words resulting in different constituents. Classic examples in English include the shift from a napron to an apron and from an ewt to a newt (so, yes, that confusion has gone both ways). It also sometimes happens during imports from another language: when Arabic al-lāzuward, lapis lazuli, was adopted in Old French, the Europeans assumed the sound of the second l was part of the definite article al- and turned it into (the ancestor of) azure. Coined in 1913 in Danish by linguist Otto Jesperson, and brought over into English a translation published the next year.
---L.
