Date:    Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:24:27 -0500
<br>From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
<br>Subject: Re: standardization of non-standard forms
<br>
<br>At 8:40 AM -0500 3/11/98, Robert Ness wrote:
<br> I've recorded the following suspected malapropisms from my students:
<br> faulter (falter); take for granite, vice versal, boiling (buillon) cube,
<br> expertriate, a doggy-dog world, to passify (too soothe into passivity), to
<br> place one on a pedistool, to route out sin, Nato is out of sink with
<br> Europe, Emerson believes in a happy median, blood was trinkling from the
<br> cut, and my favorite: he was in the field plowing his burro (i.e., he
<br> doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground). On Tue, 10 Mar 1998,
<br> Devon Coles wrote:
<br> 
<br>   Peter McGraw wrote regarding malapropisms:
<br>  
<br>  
<br>  
<br>    (My own favorite example is a woman who was denouncing some group of
<br>    people or other and concluded by telling me, "I just think they ought
<br>    to be Osterized!"  Unfortunately, to my knowledge it never caught
<br>    on, even regionally.)
<br>    
<br>   My personal favourite is the example of a receptionist in my office who
<br>   reported a great night on the town during which her boyfriend "drank himself
<br>   into Bolivia."
<br>   Cheers,
<br>   Devon Coles
<br>   dcoles[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]horizon.bc.ca
<br>  
<br>
<br>These are all nice malapropisms, granted, although I'd also call them nonce
<br>reanalyses and/or folk etymologies, since they all involve an invention of
<br>transparency at some level.  Many of them are widely attested (the
<br>"doggy-dog world", "passify" (which could be a blend of pacify and
<br>passivize), perhaps "taking for granite" (and don't forget "it takes two to
<br>tangle"), but I'd still be wary of seeing any standardization in these
<br>cases.  That is, I don't think there's really a dialect group in which
<br>these versions are learned as such (as opposed to being reinvented as nonce
<br>forms within a given idiolect).  Some we've discussed earlier under the
<br>heading of mondegreens or pullet surprises are more plausible candidates
<br>for this standardization: "duck tape", "chaise lounge", perhaps "tenure
<br>tract" or "no holes barred".
<br>        I was just reminded of another expression that has now shifted
<br>along the lines of the (non-malapropism?) examples I was citing yesterday
<br>(proof in the pudding, wherefore art thou): the reanalysis of "beg the
<br>question".  ESPN's baseball analyst Peter Gammons last night was discussing
<br>the Toronto Blue Jays' prospects for this year, with strong pitching and
<br>uncertain hitting, and said that this "begs the question of which is more
<br>important, pitching or hitting"--i.e., it RAISES that question.  OK, not a
<br>malapropism, but this clearly represents a standardization of a form not
<br>standardly used with this meaning.
<br>
<br>
<br>Larry
<br>