eggcorn?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 20, 2008, at 9:07 AM, Herb Stahlke wrote:

> I look forward to reading why these aren't garden variety ice cream
> words.
>
> Herb
>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 1:31 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky <
>> zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> i have a Language Log posting in preparation on "prejudice" for
>>>> "prejudiced" and "bias" for "biased" -- both of which are frequent
>>>> enough to have made it into Brians.

what i said in my original posting was that these were instances of
final t/d-deletion that had found their way into spelling (suggesting
that the pronunciations had been lexicalized).  that's the same
process seen in "ice cream words".  the only difference between these
examples and the usual ones of lexicalized t/d-deletion is that these
are not inside compounds.

i wasn't claiming to have found some new phenomenon.  just some cases
i hadn't been aware of before.  plus "shrew" for "shrewd", which might
just be lexicalized t/d-deletion or might be a malapropism (probably
not of the eggcorn variety, because it's hard to see a semantic
motivation).

maybe it wasn't worth commenting on.

arnold

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