What escapes at the wrong place and causes confusion may be a part of the same word or of a following word; as examples of the latter case may be given a few of the lapses recorded in Meringer and Mayer’s Versprechen und Verlesen (Stuttgart, 1895): instead of saying Lateinisches lehnwort Meringer said Latenisches ... and then corrected himself; paster noster instead of pater noster; wenn das wesser ... wetter wieder besser ist. This phenomenon is termed in Danish at bakke snagvendt (for snakke bagvendt) and in English Spoonerism, from an Oxford don, W. A. Spooner, about whom many comic lapses are related (“Don’t you ever feel a half-warmed fish” instead of “half-formed wish”).
The simplest and most frequently occurring cases in which the order for a sound is issued too early or too late are those transpositions of two sounds which the linguists term ‘metatheses.’ They occur most frequently with s in connexion with a stop (wasp, waps; ask, ax) and with r (chiefly, perhaps exclusively, the trilled form of the sound) and a vowel (third, OE. þridda). A more complicated instance is seen in Fr. trésor for tésor, thesaurum. If the mind does not realize how far the vocal organs have got, the result may be the skipping of some sound or sounds; this is particularly likely to happen when the same sound has to be repeated at some little distance, and we then have the phenomenon termed ‘haplology,’ as in eighteen, OE. eahtatiene, and in the frequent pronunciation probly for probably, Fr. contrôle, idolatrie for contrerôle, idololatrie, Lat. stipendium for stipipendium, and numerous similar instances in every language (LPh 11. 9). Sometimes a sound may be skipped because the mind is confused through the fact that the same sound has to be pronounced a little later; thus the old Gothonic word for ‘bird’ (G. vogel, OE. fugol; E. fowl with a modified meaning) is derived from the verb fly, OE. fleogan, and originally had some form like *fluglo (OE. had an adj. flugol); in recent times flugelman (G. flügelmann) has become fugleman. It. has Federigo for Frederigo—thus the exactly opposite result of what has been brought about in trésor from the same kind of mental confusion.
When words are often repeated in succession, sounds from one of them will often creep into another, as is seen very often in numerals: the nasal which was found in the old forms for 7, 9 and 10 and is still seen in E. seven, nine, ten, has no place in the word for 8, and accordingly we have in the ordinal ON. sjaundi, átti, níundi, tíundi, but already in ON. we find áttandi by the side of átti, and in Dan. the present-day forms are syvende, ottende, niende, tiende; in the same way OFr. had sedme, uidme, noefme, disme (which have all now disappeared with the exception of dîme as a substantive). In the names of the months we had the same formation of a series in OFr.: septembre, octembre, novembre, decembre, but learned influence has reinstated octobre. G. elf for older eilf owes its vowel to the following zwelf; and as now the latter has given way to zwölf (the vowel being rounded in consequence of the w) many dialects count zehn, ölf, zwölf. Similarly, it seems to be due to their frequent occurrence in close contact with the verbal forms in -no that the Italian plural pronouns egli, elle are extended with that ending: eglino amano, elleno dicono. Diez compares the curious Bavarian wo-st bist, dem-st gehörst, etc., in which the personal ending of the verb is transferred to some other word with which it has nothing to do (on this phenomenon see Herzog, Streitfragen d. roman. phil. 48, Buergel Goodwin, Umgangsspr. in Südbayern 99).
In speaking, the mind is occupied not only with the words one is already pronouncing or knows that one is going to pronounce, but also with the ideas which one has to express but for which one has not yet chosen the linguistic form. In many cases two synonyms will rise to the consciousness at the same time, and the hesitation between them will often result in a compromise which contains the head of one and the tail of another word. It is evident that this process of blending is intimately related to those we have just been considering; see the detailed treatment in Ch. XVI § [6].
Syntactical blends are very frequent. Hesitation between different from and other than will result in different than or another from, and similarly we occasionally find another to, different to, contrary than, contrary from, opposite from, anywhere than. After a clause introduced by hardly or scarcely the normal conjunction is when, but sometimes we find than, because that is regular after the synonymous no sooner.
XV.—§ 5. Latitude of Correctness.
It is a natural consequence of the essence of human speech and the way in which it is transmitted from generation to generation that we have everywhere to recognize a certain latitude of correctness, alike in the significations in which the words may be used, in syntax and in pronunciation. The nearer a speaker keeps to the centre of what is established or usual, the easier will it be to understand him. If he is ‘eccentric’ on one point or another, the result may not always be that he conveys no idea at all, or that he is misunderstood, but often merely that he is understood with some little difficulty, or that his hearers have a momentary feeling of something odd in his choice of words, or expressions or pronunciation. In many cases, when someone has overstepped the boundaries of what is established, his hearers do not at once catch his meaning and have to gather it from the whole context of what follows: not unfrequently the meaning of something you have heard as an incomprehensible string of syllables will suddenly flash upon you without your knowing how it has happened. Misunderstandings are, of course, most liable to occur if words of different meaning, which in themselves would give sense in the same collocation, are similar in sound: in that case a trifling alteration of one sound, which in other words would create no difficulty at all, may prove pernicious. Now, what is the bearing of these considerations on the question of sound changes?
The latitude of correctness is very far from being the same in different languages. Some sounds in each language move within narrow boundaries, while others have a much larger field assigned to them; each language is punctilious in some, but not in all points. Deviations which in one language would be considered trifling, in another would be intolerable perversions. In German, for instance, a wide margin is allowed for the (local and individual) pronunciation of the diphthong written eu or äu (in eule, träume): it may begin with [ɔ] or [œ] or even [æ, a], and it may end in , or the corresponding rounded vowel [y], or one of the mid front vowels, rounded or not, it does not matter much; the diphthong is recognized or acknowledged in many shapes, while the similar diphthong in English, as in toy, voice, allows a far less range of variation (for other examples see LPh 16. 22).
Now, it is very important to keep in mind that there is an intimate connexion between phonetic latitude and the significations of words. If there are in a language a great many pairs of words which are identical in sound except for, say, the difference between [e·] and [i·] (or between long and short , or between voiced and voiceless [p], or between a high and a low tone, etc.), then the speakers of that language necessarily will make that distinction with great precision, as otherwise too many misunderstandings would result. If, on the other hand, no mistakes worth speaking of would ensue, there is not the same inducement to be careful. In English, and to a somewhat lesser degree in French, it is easy to make up long lists of pairs of words where the sole difference is between voice and voicelessness in the final consonant (cab cap, bad bat, frog frock, etc.); hence final and [p], [d] and [t], [g] and [k] are kept apart conscientiously, while German possesses very few such pairs of words; in German, consequently, the natural tendency to make final consonants voiceless has not been checked, and all final stopped consonants have now become voiceless. In initial and medial position, too, there are very few examples in German of the same distinction (see the lists, LPh 6. 78), and this circumstance makes us understand why Germans are so apt to efface the difference between [b, d, g] and [p, t, k]. On the other hand, the distinction between a long and a short vowel is kept much more effectively in German than in French, because in German ten or twenty times as many words would be liable to confusion through pronouncing a long instead of a short vowel or vice versa. In French no two words are kept apart by means of stress, as in English or German; so the rule laid down in grammars that the stress falls on the final syllable of the word is very frequently broken through for rhythmic and other reasons. Other similar instances might easily be advanced.