metanalysisn.
/mɛtəˈnalᵻsɪs/, U.S. /ˌmɛdəˈnæləsəs/ Linguistics.
The reinterpretation of the form of a word resulting in the creation of a new word; esp. the changing of the boundaries between words or morphological units (see quots. 1966, 1972).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > [noun] > linguistic change > specific features or processes involved in
analogy1569
deflection1603
epenthesis1656
sandhi1806
relic1835
anamorphosis1862
metanalysis1914
drift1921
adstratum1939
grammaticalization1955
relexification1962
1914 O. Jespersen Mod. Eng. Gram. II. v. 141 I have ventured to coin the word ‘metanalysis’ for the phenomenon frequent in all languages that words or word-groups are by a new generation analyzed differently from the analysis of a former age.
1946 O. Jespersen Mod. Eng. Gram. V. xix. 308 A good many sentences of this type are double-barrelled and present the possibility of a ‘metanalysis’, by which ‘It is good for a man/not to touch a woman’ may come to be apprehended ‘It is good/for a man not to touch a woman’.
1957 G. V. Smithers Kyng Alisaunder II. 138 jker < OE. nicor by a process of metanalysis in which an initial consonant is treated as the final consonant of the preceding word, or a final consonant is attracted into the beginning of the next word.
1966 M. Pei Gloss. Ling. Terminol. (at cited word) Examples of metanalysis are the longer forms of peas and cherries, originally singulars, which were reinterpreted as pea and cherry plus the noun plural morpheme /z/.
1972 J. L. Dillard Black Eng. iv. 162 Metanalysis describes the analysis of words or groups of words into new elements…a napron was metanalyzed to an apron.
1989 Canad. Jrnl. Linguistics 34 226 They may have been reinterpreted through metanalysis as nouns preceded with the article les, in which l-deletion is common.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1914