[Ads-l] Labial+/s/ metathesis

[Laurence Horn]

> On Nov 23, 2017, at 5:36 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> When I was a wee lad in Brooklyn, I was prone to transposing consonants in
> writing and speech (eg, psaghetti), which I always attributed to dyslexia.

I remember, for a handout on metathesis, looking for examples of switches in “spaghetti”—caused, I assume, by cluster avoidance (/sp@/ > /p at s/) and by the fact that this is a frequently encountered word in childhood, when ease of articulation shifts are especially likely.  As I recall there are all sorts of g-hits for “pasghetti”, “pisketti”, “piskedi”, and so on.  There’s even a restaurant chain in St. Louis with which Wilson may or may not be familiar:

http://www.psghettis.com/daily-menu.html

(Note that despite the “p’sghetti” spelling, this wouldn’t involve an initial cluster, given that the apostrophe is pronounced as a schwa.)
There’s also just plain “sketti”, with or without tomato sauce.  

A few other classic labial + /s/  or velar + /s/ metatheses:

OE wæps > wasp
OE hæps > hasp

OE dox > dusk
asterisk vs. Asterix (and his buddy Obelix)
OE ascian/ask/“ax” (a question)

LH

> 
> On Nov 23, 2017 10:16 AM, "Neal Whitman" <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
> 
>> This reminds me of the “FAFSA metathesis” I remarked on last year
>> (“fasfa”). Or maybe it’s just because it’s time to do another one for my
>> son. :(
>> 
>> Neal
>> 
>>> On Nov 22, 2017, at 7:43 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> And as I may have mentioned when we were ensconced in that thread, a
>> number of contributors to my cancer list are under the impression that the
>> procedure we go in for periodically is the dreaded “biospy”.
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
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