Re: A language change question (longish)

On Nov 22, 2008, at 2:56 PM, Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 01:44:51PM -0600, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>> On Nov 18, 2008, at 2:22 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>>
>>> Hallo!
>>>
>>> On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:55:21 -0600, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, all. I've been wondering for a while about a kind of language
>>>> change I've read about and noticed, where a form (or class of
>>>> forms)
>>>> which is inflected for a certain category gets reanalyzed in such a
>>>> way that it no longer falls into that category.
>>>>
>>>> Examples:
>>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>> And is there a name for this phenomenon?
>>>
>>> I think it is named "reanalysis".
>>
>> Yes, but I was describing a specific kind thereof.
>
> Wikipedia seems to call it "juncture loss".
Thanks! That's a good term to know; also on Wikipedia are
"rebracketing" and "metanalysis". Their meanings overlap at least
partially.

However, it's still not the whole story behind what I'm talking
about. With processes like "a napron" -> "an apron", the beginning
and end states have substantially the *same* function and semantics
-- "singular indefinite" plus "apron". What I'm talking about is more
like if the starting point were "plural" + "apron" but it got
reanalyzed as *"singular"* + "apron".

Again, I know this is a kind of change that does occur, but what I'd
like to know specifically is: what kinds of factors encourage or
discourage it, what limitations it has, and what the intermediary
steps are in its development.

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