Rebracketing

For the process by which the elements of a word are given new meanings, see Folk etymology.

Rebracketing (also known as juncture loss, junctural metanalysis, false splitting, false separation, faulty separation, misdivision, or refactorization) is a process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one source is broken down or bracketed into a different set of factors. It is a form of folk etymology, where the new factors may appear meaningful (e.g. hamburger taken to mean a burger with ham), or may seem to be the result of valid morphological processes.

Rebracketing often focuses on highly probable word boundaries: "a noodle" might become "an oodle", since "an oodle" sounds just as grammatically correct as "a noodle", and likewise "an eagle" might become "a neagle", but "the bowl" would not become "th ebowl" and "a kite" would not become "ak ite".

Technically, bracketing is the process of breaking an utterance into its constituent parts. The term is akin to parsing for larger sentences, but is normally restricted to morphological processes at the sublexical level, i.e. within the particular word or lexeme. For example, the word uneventful is conventionally bracketed as [un+[event+ful]], and the bracketing [[un+event]+ful] leads to completely different semantics. Re-bracketing is the process of seeing the same word as a different morphological decomposition, especially where the new etymology becomes the conventional norm. The name false splitting in particular is often reserved for the case where two words mix but still remain two words (as in the "noodle" and "eagle" examples above).

The name juncture loss may be specially deployed to refer to the case of an article and a noun fusing (such as if "the jar" were to become "(the) thejar" or "an apple" were to become "(an) anapple"). This phenomenon is especially common in the cases of loanwords and loan phrases in which the recipient language's speakers at the time of the word's introduction did not realize an article to be already present (e.g. numerous Arabic-derived words including "algorithm", "alcohol", "alchemy", etc.). Especially in the case of loan phrases, juncture loss may be recognized as substandard even when widespread (e.g. "the hoi polloi", where Greek hoi = "the", and "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).

As a statistical change within a language within any century, rebracketing is a very weak statistical phenomenon. Even during phonetic template shifts, it is at best only probable that 0.1% of the vocabulary may be rebracketed in any given century.

Rebracketing is part of the process of language change, and often operates together with sound changes that facilitate the new etymology.

Role in forming new words

In English, the word adder derives from the Old English næddre, snake, re-bracketed from "a nædder" to "an adder" (c. 14th century); the word "nedder" for snake is still present in some Northern English dialects. Similarly, "nickname" is a refactorization of "an ekename" (1303, ekename = additional, little name).[1]

Ned or Neddy may have risen from generations of children hearing "mine Ed" as "my Ned" (mīn is the Middle English form of the first person possessive pronoun, and the my form was also emerging around the same time). Similarly "mine Ellie" → "my Nellie".[2]

As another example, alone has its etymology in all+one (cognate to German allein). It was subsequently rebracketed as a+lone (akin to aflutter, afire), so the second part seemed likely to be a word, "lone".

Examples

In Swahili, kitabu (“book”) is derived from Arabic kitāb. However, the word is split as a native Swahili word (ki + tabu) and declined accordingly (plural vitabu). This violates the original triliteral root of the original Arabic (K-T-B).

Examples of false splitting

In English

For a list of words relating to examples of juncture loss in English, see the English nouns which have interacted with their indefinite article category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

As demonstrated in the examples above, the primary reason of juncture loss in English is the confusion between "a" and "an". In Medieval script, words were often written so close together that for some Middle English scholars it was hard to tell where one began and another ended. The results include the following words in English:

In French

In French similar confusion arose between "le/la" and "l'-" as well as "de" and "d'-".

In Dutch

Dutch shares several examples with English, but also has some of its own. Many examples were created by reanalysing an initial n- as part of a preceding article or case ending.

In Arabic

In Arabic the confusion is generally with non-Arabic words beginning in "al-" (al is Arabic for "the").

In Greek

Examples of juncture loss

From Arabic "al"

Perhaps the commonest case of juncture loss in English comes from the Arabic al (mentioned above), mostly via Spanish, Portuguese, and Medieval Latin:

Spanish

Portuguese

Medieval Latin

Other

In Greek

Juncture loss is common in place names within Greek, or in borrowings of Greek names in Italian and Turkish, where particles (εις, στην, στον, σε) are fused with the original name.[5][6][7]

Examples:

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Douglas Harper (2001). "Online Etymology Dictionary". Retrieved 2007-07-14.
  2. ↑ McWhorter, John H (2004). The Story of Human Language. Teaching Company. ISBN 9781565859470.
  3. ↑ John McWhorter (2003). The Power of Babel: A natural history of language. Harper Perennial.
  4. ↑ Euboea#Name
  5. 1 2 Bourne, Edward G. (1887). "The Derivation of Stamboul". American Journal of Philology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 8 (1): 78–82. doi:10.2307/287478. JSTOR 287478.
  6. ↑ Marek Stachowski, Robert Woodhouse, "The Etymology of İstanbul: Making Optimal Use of the Evidence" Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 20: 221–245 (2015) doi:10.4467/20843836SE.15.015.2801
  7. 1 2 3 C. Desimoni, V. Belgrano, eds., "Atlante Idrografico del Medio Evo posseduto dal Prof. Tammar Luxoro, Pubblicata a Fac-Simile ed Annotato", Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, Genoa, 1867 5:103 cf. Luxoro Atlas
  8. ↑ Detailed history at Pylos#The Name of Navarino

References

Etymology:

Dictionaries:

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