Attention Arnold!

[Wilson Gray]

On Dec 2, 2004, at 4:30 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Attention Arnold!
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> On Dec 2, 2004, at 11:52 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 10:04:11AM -0800, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>> On Nov 30, 2004, at 11:34 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>>>
>>>> Spotted on usenet:
>>>>
>>>> "the same-oh-same-oh does get really, really boring!"
>>>
>>> into my files it goes...
>>>
>>> i'm always a bit trepidatious about posting a new assortment of
>>> eggcorns, because new ones then start streaming in.  like, i never
>>> catch up!
>>
>> You know, when Alice first posted this, I thought, "Why does
>> she think it's of interest to Arnold?"
>>
>> Now I realize you guys think it's an eggcorn.
>>
>> It probably is an eggcorn, if you just saw this on Usenet.
>> But--and as we discussed here at some point in a thread I
>> now can't find--there's a good chance that "same-oh, same-oh"
>> is in fact the _origin_ of "same-old same-old", the former
>> first appearing as pidgin in military use in East Asia, the
>> latter being a folk-etymology.
>>
>> If this is true, and if the Usenet example is a re-coinage,
>> then it would be in the unusual position of being a
>> folk-etymology that happens to be the real etymology. The
>> mind boggles.
>
> cool.
>
> there's no reason why these things couldn't cycle around.  i mean, look
> at "often".  it had a /t/, then it lost it (by regular phonological
> change), then (for lots of people) it got it back (from the
> orthography).
>
> the only real question about same-o-same-o (as a version of
> same-old-same-old) is whether the reanalysis is motivated by greater
> semantic transparency; this would require some model for X-o X-o that
> "makes sense".
>
> on reflection, i suspect that this is unlikely.  instead, it's probably
> just a phonological reanalysis, with the casual-speech version /o/ of
> /old/ (final t/d deletion, l-vocalization) understood as the lexical
> version.  (if same-o-same-o really was the original, then
> same-old-same-old was the result of *undoing* these presumed processes.
> a kind of hypercorrection, like "kitching" and "chicking" for "kitchen"
> and "chicken", respectively.)
>
> arnold
>

Not to mention "childring," very common amongst the colored. My
grandfather used it. Cf., e.g. the first verse of the song, "I wish It
Would Rain," by the Temptations, for a more recent example of this
pronunciation.

-Wilson