"certain" inThe First Noel

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:16 PM -0400 8/2/07, James Harbeck wrote:
>...
>
>A similar comma palcement error is very common in "God Rest Ye Merry,
>Gentlemen," which, in a sort of grammatical eggcorn (what would we
>call that?)

Often just a (grammatical) reanalysis.  A nice example of a similar
type (also involving lexical reanalysis) is Juliet's "Wherefore art
thou, Romeo?" or even "Romeo, wherefore art thou?", where of course
the original is "Wherefore [= 'Why'] are thou Romeo?"

>, is very often recast as "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen"
>because "rest" isn't used in this sense anymore.
>

and because "merry" isn't used as an adverb now, at least not too easily.

LH

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