aste(r)perious

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 5, 2004, at 11:26 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

>> the accent pattern isn't quite right: all the variants of
>> "asterperious" would have the pattern 2 v 1 v v (v is unaccented, 2
>> secondary accent, 1 primary accent), while all the variants of
>> "obstreperous" have the pattern 2 1 v v
>
> I don't deny that this is a point against my guess (which I've
> tentatively retracted anyway, since I think Jonathon Green's
> explanation has merit).
>
> But stress pattern is not necessarily preserved.

no, of course not.  but the details are important.

> Consider the word "masonary". This means exactly "masonry" AFAIK. I
> can't
> find any such (modern) word in any dictionary (although apparently
> there
> was Middle English "masonerie"). There are thousands of Google hits,
> including its appearance in company names and in other contexts where
> some
> care in spelling would have been expected. I've heard this word several
> times, and it is pronounced with four syllables, with secondary stress
> on
> the third, as expected from the spelling. Presumably "masonry" was
> misread/mispronounced (under influence of "stationery" or whatever)

that would be similar to the reshaping of "nuclear" as "nucular" or
"pedagogical" as "pedilogical" (see earlier threads).

>  and
> then written as it was pronounced, etc.

but think about the other motivations for the reshaping: "masonry" has
the relatively rare, and difficult, medial -n-r- (split between
syllables), so at the very least you'd expect an epenthetic vowel
("masonary" with accent pattern  1 v v v), as in the classics
"athalete" and "realator" and the like.  but  1 v v v  has too many
unaccented syllables in sequence, which itself would motivate
introducing a secondary accent on the third syllable (to maintain
alternating accent).  so "masonary" (1 v 2 v) is doubly motivated.

"obstreperous" does have a -b-str- sequence, but this is not
particularly rare or difficult in english, nor is the accent pattern  2
1 v v troublesome.  "fixing" the -b-str- could be achieved by
eliminating the b (giving "ostreperous", an attested misspelling for
"obstreperous") or introducing an epenthetic vowel between the b and
the str (giving "obestreperous", which, so far as i know, is *not*
attested).  or you could "fix" the cluster by introducing an epenthetic
vowel between the st and the r (giving "obstereperous", for which
google groups gives one hit:  "Moreover, the BT bod is left with
permanent  proof that I am indeed a condescending obstereperous
wanker."  (uk.telecom - Feb 16, 2001 by ttfn35).)  "obstereperous" has
the  2 v 1 v v  pattern of "asterperious", but a very different
distribution of syllable divisions; the exact parallel to
"asterperious" would be "obsterperious", which is, once again, not
attested, so far as i know.

i'm not saying that "obstreperous" had no effect at all on the coining,
just that it's unlikely to have been a direct model for it.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)