sound/meaning interaction in English words

[Jonathan Lighter]

He's either got tenure or he's on his way.

JL

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Grant Barrett
<gbarrett at worldnewyork.org>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
> Subject:      Fwd: sound/meaning interaction in English words
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm forwarding a message from a member of the public who has what I
> believe to be an interesting question.
>
> In restating it in a follow-up message, he put it this way: "What I'm
> interested in is nontechnical information analyzing confusion and
> meaning transfer between words with similarities in both pronunciation
> and meaning -- or a referral to an expert whom I might coax into
> helping me. And I understand that synonymous paronyms are at least a
> subset of these words."
>
> His full query is below.
>
> Grant Barrett
>
> > From: l.trager at comcast.net
> > Date: July 10, 2009 02:27:29 EDT
> > To: editor at doubletongued.org
> > Subject: sound/meaning interaction in English words
> >
> > Hi, Mr. Barrett.
> >
> > Congratulations on the Wordnik launch.
> >
> > I'm interested in finding whatever information may be accessible (in
> > all senses) to a layman about how linguistics treats confusion and
> > meaning transfer between words with both related sounds and meanings
> > (phonology-semanctics interaction?).
> >
> > I'm thinking not only of a good number of the word pairs that one
> > would find in any confusables (confusibles?) list that aren't
> > blatant malapropisms, but also of what I think may be whole clusters
> > that could get pretty large depending on the strength of connection
> > required.
> >
> > So starting with squish/squash/quash/quench/squelch, I could see
> > branching off into crush/crunch/ cramp/crimp/scrimp/skimp/stint/
> > stanch/staunch and then stamp/stomp and others. (I'd ask the Visual
> > Thesaurus to depict this, but it could end up like an infant's art
> > work.)
> >
> > I'm sure this isn't typical of many clusters -- for all I know,
> > it'll turn out to be the world's largest squid of whatever this is
> > -- but it's also not unique. I assume that often common etymologies
> > will be found (clinch/clench/cinch?) but not always.
> >
> > Cursory Web searching indicated that these patterns don't fit neatly
> > among at least the better-known "-nyms" or their eggcorn or malaprop
> > cousins. I'm writing you because I think this intersects what Blount
> > wrote about in Alphabet Juice and I see that you interviewed him.
> > That work was a lot of fun but it's impressionistic, of course, and,
> > being alphabetical and all, considerably more focused on initial
> > letters and alliteration than what I'm interested in (or I think Dr.
> > Seuss was).
> >
> > Well, damned good thing for me that e-mail isn't charged by the
> > letter like telegrams. Any thoughts? Can you guide me toward anyone
> > who's likely to have looked into it, or at least toward better
> > keywords for searching? Thanks.
> >
> > Louis Trager
> > San Leandro, California
>
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