Is there such a phenomenon as "undercorrection/hypocorrection?

[Wilson Gray]

Of course you were "kidding about the laziness." Really? What's the
evidence in support of this claim? All we know is what you wrote and
nothing that you wrote supports the "kidding" (re)interpretation.

Just kidding!

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Is there such a phenomenon as
>               "undercorrection/hypocorrection?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I was kidding about the laziness.
>I'm not calling the possessive a contraction; I'm talking about "who's' =
>from 'who + was' as the contraction. Since this was a spoken example, we =
>don't know whether the guy who said /huz/ meant 'whose' or 'who's'. The =
>situation seemed to me to make uncontracting more likely as an =
>explanation for /huz/ > 'who' than did the hypocorrection. Syntactically =
>we have to say that he changed the structure of the sentence halfway, =
>but...
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Mark A. Mandel
>Sent: Thu 3/17/2005 10:22 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject:      Re: Is there such a phenomenon as =
>"undercorrection/hypocorrection?
>=20
>And Matthew Gordon writes:
>    >>>>>
>OK, but if the man was motivated, as Wilson suggested, by trying to
>standard up his speech for the judge, why go vernacular? What I was
>suggesting was that he was reinterpreting "whose" as a contraction
>(who's) and uncontracting in deference to the formality of the situation
>or to his addressee. As we all know, contractions are a sign of laziness
>so he'd want to avoid them here.
>  <<<<<
>
>Irrelevant to your argument, a point on terminology: That's not a
>contraction. The first word of "Mommy's home!" is a contraction for =
>"Mommy
>is", but the homographous first word of "Mommy's car" is the possessive =
>form
>of "Mommy", and not a contraction of anything. Ditto for "who's there?" =
>and
>"whose/who's car?".
>
>-- Mark
>[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]