Irrevelant: (was More on: "calvary")

[Michael Israel]

Might not the metathesis of /v/ and /l/ in both
these examples result from a preference to keep the liquids
/l/ and /r/ suitably far apart? A sort of dissimilation process?

-mi

On 4/24/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: More on "calvary"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As a former "irrevalent" - or however one wishes to spell it -
> speaker, I doubt that "irreverent" has anything to do with it. Damned
> if I have any other theory to account for it, though.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 4/24/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: More on "calvary"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 10:11 AM -0700 4/24/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> > >On Apr 24, 2007, at 8:38 AM, Rosemarie wrote:
> > >
> > >>...Besides the misspelling, I believe this is a malaproprism, since
> > >>the
> > >>military fighting unit is a "cavalry" and not a "calvary."
> > >
> > >it's in most of the standard sources -- Brians, MWDEU, Garner, etc.
> > >-- as a common error.
> > >
> > >>... None of the 10 entries, in fact, gives any military  connection
> > >>whatsoever.
> > >>The only connection I can think of between a  cavalry and a
> > >>calvary, is that
> > >>having a cavalry charge at you might induce  extreme suffering,
> > >>mental and
> > >>otherwise!
> > >
> > >surely not a semantic confusion, but a spelling error:  the two words
> > >have the same seven letters in different orders.  in fact, they both
> > >begin with CA and end with RY, and the troublesome part comes in the
> > >middle (which is generally the least salient part of a word, unless
> > >the middle part is accented, which it's not in this case).
> > >
> > >what makes the error like a (classical) malapropism is that it's a
> > >confound of two existing words.
> > >
> > >but there seems to be some contribution of phonological difficulty;
> > >the L-R (the hyphen indcates a syllable division) is a bit
> > >troublesome, so that there's some temptation to move the L out of the
> > >way, giving CALVARY (with a more favored syllable structure -- *and*
> > >it's an existing word) or CAVLARY (600 or so hits; V-L isn't as good
> > >as L-V, but it's not so bad) or, moving the L back instead of
> > >forward, CAVARLY (some hits, hard to estimate how many because this
> > >occurs as a proper name; R-L is better than L-R, and the result ends
> > >in the very common final syllable LY).
> > >
> > >you can see the phonological effect independent of the existing-word
> > >effect by looking at misspellings of CHIVALRY.  quite a few (9k or
> > >so) for CHILVARY, with L-V; 800 or so for CHIVLARY, with V-L; and 600
> > >or so for CHIVARLY, with R-L.  none of these alternative spellings is
> > >an existing word.
> > >
> > >the spelling of unaccented vowels is an independent variable.  there
> > >are a modest number of misspellings of CALVARY as CALVERY and of
> > >CHIVALRY as CHIVELRY.
> > >
> > Note along the same lines "irrevelant" for "irrelevant".  77,700 hits
> > for the former, many of them not prescriptive tracts bemoaning the
> > malapropism.  Of course here there's no "irrevelant" to confuse it
> > with, but the influence of "irreverent" may be not entirely
> > irrelevant.  Along the l/r lines, there's also "heffalump" for
> > "elephant", mutatis mutandis.
> >
> > LH
> >
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