Metanalysis
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, metanalysis is the act of breaking down a word or phrase into segments or meanings not original to it. The term was coined by the linguist Otto Jespersen
, from Greek
elements meaning "a change of breakdown".
Even more than is the case with folk etymology, for metanalysis to have any interest for linguistics some overt change has to take place. If a speaker of English were simply to decide that alone 'comes apart' as a-lone (like afoot, around, aloft, astern) rather than as al-one (like although, already, altogether), there would be no way of knowing (or caring) that any such novel interpretation had taken place—unless and until something happened, and that something of course is the appearance of the novelty lone (as an attributive adjective. Most adjectives in a- in English are predicate-only, a souvenir of their origin in most cases as prepositional phrases), hence lonely, lonesome and so on.
Historical linguists are divided on whether to consider the creation of a morpheme boundary where none at all existed before to be a special case of metanalysis or something qualitatively different. For example, as analyzing peddlar as an agent noun (hence the creation of the verb to peddle). Some class this as back-formation
, but that term is also used for a rather different phenomenon, one involving actual original morpheme boundaries. For example the (very early) replacement of the regular singulars hife and glofe (or glufe) by the forms hive and glove, back-formed from the plurals hives, gloves.
A huge number of English verbs of Latinate origin appear to have been back-formed from nouns in -tion, -sion and the like: profess, relate, pollute, confect and literally hundreds more are, with rare exceptions, first attested a hundred years or more after the first attestations of the nouns profession, pollution, confection and so on. (They hardly could come directly from Latin; formally they often look like a Latin perfect participle, which would be an odd source for a verb.)
instead of the noun
. Rather more rarely the transfer of the -n- from the article to the noun, as in newt and (obsolete) nuncle (the latter from the respectful term of address mine uncle, and it is well to remember that not long ago a/an shared the alternation with the very common words my/mine, thy/thine). The expression for the nonce is historically for þan āne(s) "for the one time, for the purpose", in which the -n- is what is left of the dative case of the definite article (OE þæm). The phrase at all is commonly pronounced as though the morphemes were a tall.
Metanalysis of words:
Metanalysis of phrases: in the phrase God rest ye merry gentlemen, originally merry was a complement with rest (i.e., "[may God] give you gentlemen a pleasant repose"), now frequently construed as an ordinary adjective modifying gentlemen (and in all probability relexicalized with the current sense of merry, i.e. cheerful, jolly, though that is harder to be certain of). The expression "to rest merry" and the like was once generally current.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, metanalysis is the act of breaking down a word or phrase into segments or meanings not original to it. The term was coined by the linguist Otto Jespersen
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.He was born in Randers in northern Jutland and attended Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English, French, and Latin...
, from Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
elements meaning "a change of breakdown".
Even more than is the case with folk etymology, for metanalysis to have any interest for linguistics some overt change has to take place. If a speaker of English were simply to decide that alone 'comes apart' as a-lone (like afoot, around, aloft, astern) rather than as al-one (like although, already, altogether), there would be no way of knowing (or caring) that any such novel interpretation had taken place—unless and until something happened, and that something of course is the appearance of the novelty lone (as an attributive adjective. Most adjectives in a- in English are predicate-only, a souvenir of their origin in most cases as prepositional phrases), hence lonely, lonesome and so on.
Historical linguists are divided on whether to consider the creation of a morpheme boundary where none at all existed before to be a special case of metanalysis or something qualitatively different. For example, as analyzing peddlar as an agent noun (hence the creation of the verb to peddle). Some class this as back-formation
Back-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
, but that term is also used for a rather different phenomenon, one involving actual original morpheme boundaries. For example the (very early) replacement of the regular singulars hife and glofe (or glufe) by the forms hive and glove, back-formed from the plurals hives, gloves.
A huge number of English verbs of Latinate origin appear to have been back-formed from nouns in -tion, -sion and the like: profess, relate, pollute, confect and literally hundreds more are, with rare exceptions, first attested a hundred years or more after the first attestations of the nouns profession, pollution, confection and so on. (They hardly could come directly from Latin; formally they often look like a Latin perfect participle, which would be an odd source for a verb.)
Examples of metanalysis
Metanalysis across words: an adder was originally a nadder, and an apron a napron, but the initial n was metanalyzed as belonging to the articleArticle (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
instead of the noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
. Rather more rarely the transfer of the -n- from the article to the noun, as in newt and (obsolete) nuncle (the latter from the respectful term of address mine uncle, and it is well to remember that not long ago a/an shared the alternation with the very common words my/mine, thy/thine). The expression for the nonce is historically for þan āne(s) "for the one time, for the purpose", in which the -n- is what is left of the dative case of the definite article (OE þæm). The phrase at all is commonly pronounced as though the morphemes were a tall.
-
- This appears to be the most common use of the term.
Metanalysis of words:
- foremost resegmented as fore + most (rather than form + est, cf. former); the change in the vowel is one piece of evidence, but so is the metastasis of the new relational affix -most to novel formations (northernmost, rightmost, uppermost, etc., etc.).
- Folk etymology: reading history as his story (and coining herstory in reaction) is an example of metanalysis.
- Back-formationBack-formationIn etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
, such as taking -holic from alcoholic and forming compounds such as workaholic. (Such things are a little hard for linguistics to explain, since it seems ultimately to consist of nothing more profound than playing with syllables, as in such formations as clamato a mixture of clam juice and tomato juice, steakabob, beef on a skewer. Most such are one-off coinages, but a few, like the -holic example, and burger from hamburger [steak] have been quite productive of new coinages. - Juncture loss: confusion over boundaries of words produces new words, as in the examples of apron, newt, above.
- Some examples of clippingClipping-Words:* Clipping , the cutting-out of articles from a paper publication* Clipping , shortening the articulation of a speech sound, usually a vowel* Clipping , the formation of a new word by shortening it, e.g...
, such as copter (now becoming obsolete in favor of chopper) from helicopter (where in Greek the morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
division is helico- and -pter lit. "spiral wing(s)".) In any case the other half of the "compound" is alive, heliport, helipad and so on.
Metanalysis of phrases: in the phrase God rest ye merry gentlemen, originally merry was a complement with rest (i.e., "[may God] give you gentlemen a pleasant repose"), now frequently construed as an ordinary adjective modifying gentlemen (and in all probability relexicalized with the current sense of merry, i.e. cheerful, jolly, though that is harder to be certain of). The expression "to rest merry" and the like was once generally current.