v/l reversal - revelation

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun Dec 7 16:54:08 UTC 2008


On Dec 7, 2008, at 8:18 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> It's not just v/l.  Here's one I just caught: dymanic:...

n ... m metathesized to m ... n is an often-observed phenomenon in
child language in english: my daughter had "aminal" for "animal" and
"cimmanon" for "cinnamon" regularly for a period of time, and often
spontaneously metathesized n and m in repeating unfamiliar words
offered to her.

the usual story is that this is part of a tendency to keep coronals to
the right of non-coronals.

there's a fair amount of literature on the subject.

arnold

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