interstate highway to Cupertino?

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jul 21, 2009, at 10:57 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

> Subject:      interstate highway to Cupertino?
>
> The word highlighted here was corrected in the online version to
> "interstate".  I wonder if this is a mere typo, though, given the
> existence of "intestate", indeed for 500 years (according to the
> respective OED entries) before anyone thought of writing
> "interstate";  dying intestate (without a will) is a much older
> practice than dying on the interstate, although of course nothing
> prevents one from doing both.

age is not the relevant factor; frequency and salience are the
relevant factors.  pretty much everybody in the U.S. knows
"interstate", but "intestate" is a relatively rare technical term.

>  In any case, I was wondering if a
> Cupertinesque spell-check might have turned "interstate" into
> "intestate"

all my spell-checker does with "interstate" is capitalize it.

> while this could have been a typo, somehow the respelling seems more
> likely in the case under discussion than with, say, "inteference" or
> "intecourse".

in fact, "inteference" is common, even in print (and is surely very
common as a spoken variant): 50,600 raw googlehits.  "intecourse" is
moderately common in print:  6,020 raw googehits.  "intestate highway"
gets only small numbers (345).

the most likely source of "inteference" and "intecourse" isn't hard to
find: the "r-dissimilation" in English studied by Nancy Hall and
mentioned here several times in the past.  (as far as i can see, these
two words aren't in her lists, but they ought to be.)  but in
"interstate", there's no r-trigger for deletion of the r in "inter-".

(remember that we're talking about "r-dissimilation" in rhotic
varieties.  "inter-" before C in non-rhotic varieties would of course
be deletable, and spellings without the r would be possible as ear-
spellings in such varieties.)

arnold

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