Talk:Rebracketing

Mine Ed?
So what's the Ed? Mine => My is understandable but what it the original Ed that led to Ned. Khu kri  12:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Edward, I believe. Raistlin11325 13:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd like to see a citation, and not from some website. This "mine Ed" -> "my Ned" smells of cod etymology. Gordonofcartoon 13:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If you look up some dictionaries, another good example might be "for the nonce" as a mistake for "for then ones"? Samantha of Cardyke 15:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Juncture Loss: What name to use?
The article Juncture loss covers much of the same territory, and clearly these must be merged. The section of English examples in that article is much stronger, though I feel the lead in rebracketing is clearer.

Before starting work on the merge, a question we need to decide is whether to name the combined article rebracketing or Juncture loss.

I encountered "rebracketing" in The Power of Babel by John McWhorter (2003), where he uses it as a fait accompli - as a well-understood technical term. I am not aware of sources that use the name "juncture loss". "Bracketing" is undoubtedly a very standard term for morphological chunking, and rebracketing is a often-used derivative technical term.

The Handbook of Word Formation, Springer, 2005, uses the term Rebracketing and does not refer to "Juncture Loss"(e.g. English Word-Formation Processes).

Googling is sometimes instructive, but is difficult here; just "juncture loss" gives a number of plastic moulding websites. But using the two variants along with "etymology" - I get:


 * "juncture loss" + etymology - 21 hits


 * "rebracketing" + etymology - 89 hits

The word "juncture loss" appears in some online etymology dictionaries (yourdictionary.com).

Rebracketing however, appears in a large number of linguistic journal articles:
 * Trans. Philological Society,
 * Journal of English Linguistics,
 * Australian J of Linguistics,
 * J. American Speech

And also in linguistic book reviews (elsevier), the linguist list archive, as well as websites on language etc.

So on the whole, it would seem that rebracketing perhaps has a stronger case. But clearly, there is room for some discussion on this issue. mukerjee (talk) 16:03, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Going ahead and boldly doing the merge, using the name 'rebracketing'. 4pq1injbok (talk) 02:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

A nother example
I hear this quite frequently. Maybe worth putting in the article? It is fully realized as, e.g. "That's a whole nother thing." Phil wink (talk) 17:08, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Frikadella not Tartare
Germans generally translate english "hamburger" as "frikadelle"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frikadelle

In three months in Hamburg I never heard anyone use the word Tartare, nor saw it on any menu. But I ate several Frikadelles — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.197.129.106 (talk) 05:26, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Isn't lute (the musical instrument) yet another example from Arabic?
I've read in more than one place that the English word "lute" (the musical instrument) comes from a misreading of Arabic "al oud" (I may have the Arabic slightly wrong), and indeed the Arabic instrument that's just like a lute is called an oud. I would edit the article itself to point this out, but since I'm not absolutely certain, I'll defer to anyone who knows better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DMR5713 (talk • contribs) 20:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Removed superfluous example
I removed this example from a sentence:

"the Magna Carta", in which no article is necessary because magna carta is borrowed rather than calqued (Latin's lack of articles makes the original term either implicitly definite or indeterminate with respect to definiteness [in this context, the former], and the English phrase's proper-noun status renders unnecessary any further determination through the use of an article)

because it's dubious (other loanwords like "the Parthenon" do use the definite article in English) and even if correct requires lengthy justification which distracts from the main point. The remaining example is clearer and I think suffices to illustrate the point. 2620:15C:84:7:B099:B51B:989:8490 (talk) 21:36, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Creation of productive affixes: "-Gate"?
In the section "Creation of productive affixes", it seems as if the Watergate scandal and the plethora of subsequent scandals named "____-gate" (unrelated to the Watergate Hotel) should be listed. Seansinc (talk) 19:08, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I don’t see how “jetcopter” and “heliport” prove rebracketing of “helicopter”
I don’t see evidence that “copter” or “heli” are seen as meaning something in themselves. It’s like how “mockumentary” doesn’t prove rebracketing into “doc” and “umentary” Transient Being (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2024 (UTC)