[CHAPTER X]
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD—continued
§ 1. Confusion of Words. § 2. Metanalysis. § 3. Shiftings of Meanings. § 4. Differentiations. § 5. Summary. § 6. Indirect Influence. § 7. New Languages.
X.—§ 1. Confusion of Words.
Some of the most typical childish sound-substitutions can hardly be supposed to leave any traces in language as permanently spoken, because they are always thoroughly corrected by the children themselves at an early age; among these I reckon the almost universal pronunciation of t instead of k. When, therefore, we do find that in some words a t has taken the place of an earlier k, we must look for some more specific cause of the change: but this may, in some cases at any rate, be found in a tendency of children’s speech which is totally independent of the inability to pronounce the sound of k at an early age, and is, indeed, in no way to be reckoned among phonetic tendencies, namely, the confusion resulting from an association of two words of similar sound (cf. above, p. 122). This, I take it, is the explanation of the word mate in the sense ‘husband or wife,’ which has replaced the earlier make: a confusion was here natural, because the word mate, ‘companion,’ was similar not only in sound, but also in signification. The older name for the ‘soft roe’ of fishes was milk (as Dan. mælk, G. milch), but from the fifteenth century milt has been substituted for it, as if it were the same organ as the milt, ‘the spleen.’ Children will associate words of similar sound even in cases where there is no connecting link in their significations; thus we have bat for earlier bak, bakke (the animal, vespertilio), though the other word bat, ‘a stick,’ is far removed in sense.
I think we must explain the following cases of isolated sound-substitution as due to the same confusion with unconnected words in the minds of children hearing the new words for the first time: trunk in the sense of ‘proboscis of an elephant,’ formerly trump, from Fr. trompe, confused with trunk, ‘stem of a tree’; stark-naked, formerly start-naked, from start, ‘tail,’ confused with stark, ‘stiff’; vent, ‘air-hole,’ from Fr. fente, confused with vent, ‘breath’ (for this v cannot be due to the Southern dialectal transition from f, as in vat from fat, for that transition does not, as a rule, take place in French loans); cocoa for cacao, confused with coconut; match, from Fr. mèche, by confusion with the other match; chine, ‘rim of cask,’ from chime, cf. G. kimme, ‘border,’ confused with chine, ‘backbone.’ I give some of these examples with a little diffidence, though I have no doubt of the general principle of childish confusion of unrelated words as one of the sources of irregularities in the development of sounds.
These substitutions cannot of course be separated from instances of ‘popular etymology,’ as when the phrase to curry favour was substituted for the former to curry favel, where favel means ‘a fallow horse,’ as the type of fraud or duplicity (cf. G. den fahlen hengst reiten, ‘to act deceitfully,’ einen auf einem fahlen pferde ertappen, ‘to catch someone lying’).
X.—§ 2. Metanalysis.
We now come to the phenomenon for which I have ventured to coin the term ‘metanalysis,’ by which I mean that words or word-groups are by a new generation analyzed differently from the analysis of a former age. Each child has to find out for himself, in hearing the connected speech of other people, where one word ends and the next one begins, or what belongs to the kernel and what to the ending of a word, etc. (VII § [6]). In most cases he will arrive at the same analysis as the former generation, but now and then he will put the boundaries in another place than formerly, and the new analysis may become general. A naddre (the ME. form for OE. an nædre) thus became an adder, a napron became an apron, an nauger: an auger, a numpire: an umpire; and in psychologically the same way an ewte (older form evete, OE. efete) became a newt: metanalysis accordingly sometimes shortens and sometimes lengthens a word. Riding as a name of one of the three districts of Yorkshire is due to a metanalysis of North Thriding (ON. þriðjungr, ‘third part’), as well as of East Thriding, West Thriding, after the sound of th had been assimilated to the preceding t.
One of the most frequent forms of metanalysis consists in the subtraction of an s, which originally belonged to the kernel of a word, but is mistaken for the plural ending; in this way we have pea instead of the earlier peas, pease, cherry for ME. cherris, Fr. cerise, asset from assets, Fr. assez, etc. Cf. also the vulgar Chinee, Portuguee, etc.[38]