Talk:Metanalysis (linguistics)

Untitled
I really don't think it's useful to put folk etymology in with metanalysis, since (among other things) the resulting novelties rarely have any functional connection with the starting point. Functionally, what comes out of an apron for a napron is substantially what went into the process, whereas a folk-etymologized fantasy like sparrowgrass quite changes the way the formation works (if the result works at all, which is not always the case. Take the Persian word for "helicopter", jāli kāftar, transparently a loan-word from helicopter but in Persian a transparent compound "screen-pigeon", which makes no sense beyond the fact that the components are recognizable even if they don't add up to anything intelligible).

In any case, even in the professional literature there is a good deal of confusion over what such terms as back formation mean. It seems to me that such innovations as to peddle, to enthuse from peddlar and enthusiasm are significantly different kinds of historical events from the creation of the singulars hive, glove as in the examples I've given. Another example of back-formation strictly understood is the verb live, which resembles no present-tense form in Old English and appears to be abstracted from the preterite lifde. Alsihler 20:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Foremost, northernmost
The text says:


 * 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.).

In what way are they novel? I don't know how about northernmost, but northmost was used already in Old English. Cf. The Voyage of Ohthere, lines 1-2, "Ohthere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede cyninge, þæt he ealra Norðmonna norþmest bude." , mest meaning 'most' (cf. Modern Dutch meest). Ryba g (talk) 12:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC)