eggcorn

[Dennis R. Preston]

They are not homonyms for me, even in rapid speech (and, as I
confessed in an earlier note, I am an tense /e/ 'egg' speaker).

dInIs



>On Fri, 13 May 2005 10:04:32 -0700, Arnold M. Zwicky
><zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>
>>On May 13, 2005, at 9:49 AM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>>
>>>  "eyg-corn"--of course!  I didn't get in on the earliest exchanges on
>>>  eggcorns, but was this derivation from tensed /E/ mentioned?
>>
>>yes, indeed.
>
>Mentioned by Mark Liberman as early as Sep. 23, 2003:
>
>-----
>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000018.html
>Note, by the way, that the author of this mis-hearing may be a speaker of
>the dialect in which "beg" has the same vowel as the first syllable of
>"bagel". For these folks, "egg corn" and "acorn" are really homonyms, if
>the first is not spoken so as to artificially separate the words.
>-----
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736