Hypercorrection

Last updated

In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form or phrase they use is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal or educated. [1] [2]

Contents

Linguistic hypercorrection occurs when a real or imagined grammatical rule is applied in an inappropriate context, so that an attempt to be "correct" leads to an incorrect result. It does not occur when a speaker follows "a natural speech instinct", according to Otto Jespersen and Robert J. Menner. [3]

Hypercorrection can be found among speakers of less prestigious language varieties who attempt to produce forms associated with high-prestige varieties, even in situations where speakers of those varieties would not. Some commentators call such production hyperurbanism. [4]

Hypercorrection can occur in many languages and wherever multiple languages or language varieties are in contact.

Types of overapplied rules

Studies in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have noted the overapplication of rules of phonology, syntax, or morphology, resulting either from different rules in varieties of the same language or second-language learning. An example of a common hypercorrection based on application of the rules of a second (i.e., new, foreign) language is the use of octopi for the plural of octopus in English; this is based on the faulty assumption that octopus is a second declension word of Latin origin when in fact it is third declension and comes from Greek. [5] [ better source needed ]

Sociolinguists often note hypercorrection in terms of pronunciation (phonology). For example, William Labov noted that all of the English speakers he studied in New York City in the 1960s tended to pronounce words such as hard as rhotic (pronouncing the "R" as /hɑːrd/ rather than /hɑːd/ ) more often when speaking carefully. Furthermore, middle class speakers had more rhotic pronunciation than working class speakers did.

However, lower-middle class speakers had more rhotic pronunciation than upper-middle class speakers. Labov suggested that these lower-middle class speakers were attempting to emulate the pronunciation of upper-middle class speakers, but were actually over-producing the very noticeable R-sound. [6]

A common source of hypercorrection in English speakers' use of the language's morphology and syntax happens in the use of pronouns (see § Personal pronouns). [4]

Hypercorrection can also occur when learners of a new-to-them (second, foreign) language try to avoid applying grammatical rules from their native language to the new language (a situation known as language transfer). The effect can occur, for example, when a student of a new language has learned that certain sounds of their original language must usually be replaced by another in the studied language, but has not learned when not to replace them. [7]

English

English has no authoritative body or language academy codifying norms for standard usage, unlike some other languages. Nonetheless, within groups of users of English, certain usages are considered unduly elaborate adherences to formal rules. Such speech or writing is sometimes called hyperurbanism, defined by Kingsley Amis as an "indulged desire to be posher than posh".[ citation needed ]

Personal pronouns

In 2004, Jack Lynch, assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, said on Voice of America that the correction of the subject-positioned "you and me" to "you and I" leads people to "internalize the rule that 'you and I' is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they should not – such as 'he gave it to you and I' when it should be 'he gave it to you and me.' [8]

However, the linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum write that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear" and that "[t]hose who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption." [9]

H-adding

Some British accents, such as Cockney, drop the initial h from words; e.g., have becomes 'ave. A hypercorrection associated with this is H-adding, adding an initial h to a word which would not normally have one. An example of this can be found in the speech of the character Parker in the marionette TV series Thunderbirds , e.g., "We'll 'ave the haristocrats 'ere soon" (from the episode "Vault of Death"). Parker's speech was based on a real person the creators encountered at a restaurant in Cookham. [10]

The same, for the same reason, is often heard when a person of Italian origins speaks English: "I'm hangry hat Francesco", "I'd like to heat something". This should not be expected to be consistent with the h-dropping common in the Italian accent, so the same person may say "an edge-og" instead of "a hedgehog" or just say it correctly. [11]

Hyperforeignism

Hyperforeignism arises from speakers misidentifying the distribution of a pattern found in loanwords and extending it to other environments. The result of this process does not reflect the rules of either language. [12] For example, habanero is sometimes pronounced as though it were spelled "habañero", in imitation of other Spanish words like jalapeño and piñata. [13] Machismo is sometimes pronounced "makizmo", apparently as if it were Italian, rather than the phonetic English pronunciation which resembles the original Spanish word, /mɑːˈtʃiz.mo/. Similarly, the z in chorizo is sometimes pronounced as /ts/ (as if it were Italian), whereas the original Spanish pronunciation has /θ/ or /s/.

English as a second language

Some English-Spanish cognates primarily differ by beginning with s instead of es, such as the English word spectacular and the Spanish word espectacular. A native Spanish speaker may conscientiously hypercorrect for the word escape by writing or saying scape, or for the word establish by writing or saying stablish, which is archaic, or an informal pronunciation in some dialects. [14]

Serbo-Croatian

As the locative case is rarely found in vernacular usage in the southern and eastern dialects of Serbia, and the accusative is used instead, speakers tend to overcorrect when trying to deploy the standard variety of the language in more formal occasions, thus using the locative even when the accusative should be used (typically, when indicating direction rather than location): "Izlazim na kolovozu" instead of "izlazim na kolovoz". [15]

Hebrew and Yiddish

Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the following hypercorrect pronunciations in Israeli Hebrew are "snobbatives" (from snob + -ative, modelled upon comparatives and superlatives): [16]

The last two hypercorrection examples derive from a confusion related to the Qamatz Gadol Hebrew vowel, which in the accepted Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation is rendered as /aː/ but which is pronounced /ɔ/ in Ashkenazi Hebrew, and in Hebrew words that also occur in Yiddish. However, the Qamatz Qaṭan vowel, which is visually indistinguishable from the Qamatz Gadol vowel, is rendered as /o/ in both pronunciations. This leads to hypercorrections in both directions.

Other hypercorrections occur when speakers of Israeli Hebrew (which is based on Sephardic) attempt to pronounce Ashkenazi Hebrew, for example for religious purposes. The month of Shevat ( שבט ‎) is mistakenly pronounced Shvas, as if it were spelled *שְׁבַת‎. In an attempt to imitate Polish and Lithuanian dialects, qamatz (both gadol and qatan), which would normally be pronounced [ɔ], is hypercorrected to the pronunciation of holam, [ɔj], rendering גדול ‎ ('large') as goydl and ברוך ‎ ('blessed') as boyrukh.

Spanish

In some Spanish dialects, the final intervocalic /d/ ([ð]) is dropped, such as in pescado (fish), which would typically be pronounced [pesˈkaðo] but can be manifested as [pesˈkao] dialectically. Speakers sensitive to this variation may insert a /d/ intervocalically into a word without such a consonant, such as in the case of bacalao (cod), correctly pronounced [bakaˈlao] but occasionally hypercorrected to [bakaˈlaðo]. [17]

Outside Spain and in Andalusia, the phonemes /θ/ and /s/ have merged, mostly into the realization [ s ] but ceceo, i.e. the pronunciation of both as [ s̟ ] is found in some areas as well, primarily parts of Andalusia. Speakers of varieties that have [ s ] in all cases will frequently produce [ θ ] even in places where peninsular Spanish has [ s ] when trying to imitate a peninsular accent. As Spanish orthography distinguishes the two phonemes in all varieties, but the pronunciation is not differentiated in Latin American varieties, some speakers also get mixed up with the spelling.

Many Spanish dialects tend to aspirate syllable-final /s/, and some even elide it often. Since this phenomenon is somewhat stigmatized, some speakers in the Caribbean and especially the Dominican Republic may attempt to correct for it by pronouncing an /s/ where it does not belong. For example, catorce años '14 years' may be pronounced as catorces año. [18]

German

The East Franconian dialects are notable for lenition of stops /p/ /t/ /k/ to [b], [d], [g]. Thus, a common hypercorrection is the fortition of properly lenis stops, sometimes including aspiration as evidenced by the speech of Günther Beckstein.

The digraph <ig> in word-final position is pronounced [ɪç] per the Bühnendeutsch standard, but this pronunciation is frequently perceived as nonstandard and instead realized as [ɪɡ̊] or [ɪk] (final obstruent devoicing) even by speakers from dialect areas that pronounce the digraph [ɪç] or [ɪʃ] .

Palatinate German language speakers are among those who pronounce both the digraph ⟨ch⟩ and the trigraph ⟨sch⟩ as [ʃ] . A common hypercorrection is to produce [ç] even where standard German has [ʃ] such as in Helmut Kohl's hypercorrect rendering of "Geschichte", the German word for "history" with a German pronunciation: [ç] both for the <sch> (standard German [ʃ] ) and the ⟨ch⟩.

Proper names and German loanwords into other languages that have been reborrowed, particularly when they have gone through or are perceived to have gone through the English language are often pronounced "hyperforeign". Examples include "Hamburger" or the names of German-Americans and the companies named after them, even if they were or are first generation immigrants.

Some German speakers pronounce the metal umlaut as if it were a "normal" German umlaut. For example, when Mötley Crüe visited Germany, singer Vince Neil said the band could not figure out why "the crowds were chanting, 'Mutley Cruh! Mutley Cruh!'" [19]

Swedish

In Swedish, the word att is sometimes pronounced /ɔ/ when used as an infinitive marker (its conjunction homograph is never pronounced that way, however). The conjunction och is also sometimes pronounced the same way. Both pronunciations can informally be spelt å. ("Jag älskar å fiska å jag tycker också om å baka.") When spelt more formally, the infinitive marker /'ɔ/ is sometimes misspelt och. ("Få mig och hitta tillbaka.*")

The third person plural pronoun, pronounced dom in many dialects, is formally spelt de in the subjective case and dem in the objective case. Informally it can be spelled dom ("Dom tycker om mig."), yet dom is only acceptable in spoken language. [20] When spelt more formally, they are often confused with each other. ("De tycker om mig." as a correct form, compared to "Dem tycker om mig"* as an incorrect form in this case). As an object form, using dem in a sentence would be correct in the sentence "Jag ger dem en present" ('I give them a gift.')

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American English</span> Varieties of English native to the United States

American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.

Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect or simply the way a particular individual speaks a word or language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-native pronunciations of English</span> Overview of English-learners pronunciation

Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native speakers of any language tend to transfer the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules of their first language into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations not found in the speaker's native language.

H-dropping or aitch-dropping is the deletion of the voiceless glottal fricative or "H-sound",. The phenomenon is common in many dialects of English, and is also found in certain other languages, either as a purely historical development or as a contemporary difference between dialects. Although common in most regions of England and in some other English-speaking countries, and linguistically speaking a neutral evolution in languages, H-dropping is often stigmatized as a sign of careless or uneducated speech.

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the non-standard accent. AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.

A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounced for many generations or even hundreds of years have increasingly been pronounced as written, especially since the arrival of mandatory schooling and universal literacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romanization of Hebrew</span> Transcription of Hebrew into the Latin alphabet

The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words.

In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally considered by a society to be the most "correct" or otherwise superior. In many cases, they are the standard form of the language, though there are exceptions, particularly in situations of covert prestige. In addition to dialects and languages, prestige is also applied to smaller linguistic features, such as the pronunciation or usage of words or grammatical constructs, which may not be distinctive enough to constitute a separate dialect. The concept of prestige provides one explanation for the phenomenon of variation in form among speakers of a language or languages.

California English collectively refers to varieties of American English native to California. As California became one of the most ethnically diverse U.S. states, English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds began to pick up different linguistic elements from one another and also developed new ones; the result is both divergence and convergence within California English. Overall, linguists who studied English before and immediately after World War II tended to find few, if any, patterns unique to California. While California English continues to evolve, today it still falls within a General or Western American accent; however, alternatively viewed, California accents, due to unconscious linguistic prestige, may themselves be serving as a baseline to define accents around the U.S. that are perceived as "General American". In fact, several California-like accent features are spreading across the nation, according to 21st century research.

An ethnolect is generally defined as a language variety that marks speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety. According to another definition, an ethnolect is any speech variety associated with a specific ethnic group. It may be a distinguishing mark of social identity, both within the group and for outsiders. The term combines the concepts of an ethnic group and dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caribbean Spanish</span> Spanish dialects of the Caribbean region

Caribbean Spanish is the general name of the Spanish dialects spoken in the Caribbean region. The Spanish language was introduced to the Caribbean in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus. It resembles the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands, and, more distantly, the Spanish of western Andalusia. With more than 25 million speakers, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the Caribbean Islands.

Quebec English encompasses the English dialects of the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. There are few distinctive phonological features and very few restricted lexical features common among English-speaking Quebecers. The native English speakers in Quebec generally align to Standard Canadian English, one of the largest and most relatively homogeneous dialects in North America. This standard English accent is common in Montreal, where the vast majority of Quebec's native English speakers live. English-speaking Montrealers have, however, established ethnic groups that retain certain lexical features: Irish, Jewish, Italian, and Greek communities that all speak discernible varieties of English. Isolated fishing villages on the Basse-Côte-Nord of Quebec speak Newfoundland English, and many Gaspesian English-speakers use Maritime English. Francophone speakers of Quebec also have their own second-language English that incorporates French accent features, vocabulary, etc. Finally, the Kahnawake Mohawks of south shore Montreal and the Cree and Inuit of Northern Quebec speak English with their own distinctive accents, usage, and expressions from their indigenous languages.

A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of late with that of wait or eight. Other English varieties contrast the vowel of late or wait with that of eight. This non-overlapping pair of phonemes from two different varieties can be reconciled by positing three different diaphonemes: A first diaphoneme for words like late, a second diaphoneme for words like wait, and a third diaphoneme for words like eight.

A hyperforeignism is a type of hypercorrection where speakers identify an inaccurate pattern in loanwords from a foreign language and then apply that pattern to other loanwords. This results in a pronunciation of those loanwords which does not reflect the rules of either language. For example, the ⟨n⟩ in habanero is pronounced as in Spanish, but English speakers often pronounce it with, approximating as if it were spelled habañero. The proposed explanation is that English speakers are familiar with other Spanish loanwords like piñata and jalapeño, and incorrectly assume that all Spanish words have in place of.

Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language. Often, this anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the style of language expected by the speakers' interlocutor(s). Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual. This insecurity can lead to stylistic, and phonetic shifts away from an affected speaker's default speech variety; these shifts may be performed consciously on the part of the speaker, or may be reflective of an unconscious effort to conform to a more prestigious or context-appropriate variety or style of speech. Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community, and so may vary based on socioeconomic class and gender. It is also especially pertinent in multilingual societies.

Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation, lexicon, grammar, and other features. Different communities or individuals speaking the same language may differ from each other in their choices of which of the available linguistic features to use, and how often, and the same speaker may make different choices on different occasions.

Kamatz or qamatz is a Hebrew niqqud (vowel) sign represented by two perpendicular lines ⟨ ָ ‎ ⟩ underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it usually indicates the phoneme which is the "a" sound in the word spa and is transliterated as a. In these cases, its sound is identical to the sound of pataḥ in modern Hebrew. In a minority of cases it indicates the phoneme, equal to the sound of ḥolam. In traditional Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation, qamatz is pronounced as the phoneme, which becomes in some contexts in southern Ashkenazi dialects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York accent</span> Sound system of New York City English

The sound system of New York City English is popularly known as a New York accent. The accent of the New York metropolitan area is one of the most recognizable in the United States, largely due to its popular stereotypes and portrayal in radio, film, and television. Several other common names exist based on more specific locations, such as Bronx accent, Brooklyn accent, Queens accent, Long Island accent, North Jersey accent. Research supports the continued classification of all these under a single label, despite some common assumptions among locals that they meaningfully differ.

The distinction between rhoticity and non-rhoticity is one of the most prominent ways in which varieties of the English language are classified. In rhotic accents, the sound of the historical English rhotic consonant,, is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic accents, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments: when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, but a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound and pronounces them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/. When an r is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "better apples," most non-rhotic speakers will preserve the in that position since it is followed by a vowel in this case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standard Canadian English</span> Variety of Canadian English

Standard Canadian English is the largely homogeneous variety of Canadian English that is spoken particularly across Ontario and Western Canada, as well as throughout Canada among urban middle-class speakers from English-speaking families, excluding the regional dialects of Atlantic Canadian English. Canadian English has a mostly uniform phonology and much less dialectal diversity than neighbouring American English. In particular, Standard Canadian English is defined by the cot–caught merger to and an accompanying chain shift of vowel sounds, which is called the Canadian Shift. A subset of the dialect geographically at its central core, excluding British Columbia to the west and everything east of Montreal, has been called Inland Canadian English. It is further defined by both of the phenomena that are known as Canadian raising : the production of and with back starting points in the mouth and the production of with a front starting point and very little glide that is almost in the Canadian Prairies.

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press. Archived from the original on 20 November 2002.
  2. ↑ Labov, William (1991). Sociolinguistic patterns. Conduct and communication series. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia press. p. 126. ISBN   978-0-8122-1052-1.
  3. ↑ Menner, Robert J. (1937). "Hypercorrect forms in American English". American Speech . 12 (3): 167–78. doi:10.2307/452423. JSTOR   452423.
  4. 1 2 "hypercorrection". Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield, Massachusetts, US: Merriam-Webster. 1994. ISBN   978-0-87779-132-4.
  5. ↑ Stamper, Kory. Ask the editor: octopus. Merriam-Webster . Retrieved 29 January 2024– via Daily Motion.
  6. ↑ Social Stratification of English in New York City (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006 [1966]. ISBN   978-0-521-52805-4.
  7. ↑ Carey, Michael. "Interlanguage Phonology Sources of L2 Pronunciation 'Errors'". Phonetics and Phonology. Macquarie University Department of Linguistics. Archived from the original on 2 July 2005.
  8. ↑ "Wordmaster: Hypercorrection Is Not Simply Being Fussy or a Nitpicker or a Pedant". VOA: Learning English . 23 July 2007. Archived from the original on 15 October 2012. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  9. ↑ Huddleston, Rodney D.; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2005). A student's introduction to English grammar. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 107. ISBN   978-0-521-84837-4. OCLC   57574762.
  10. ↑ "Voiceover: Gerry Anderson". David Graham Official Site. Archived from the original on 1 September 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
  11. ↑ "The Beauty of Italian-American "Broken" English – Language Analysis". 2 January 2021.
  12. ↑ Wells, John Christopher (1982). Accents of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 108. ISBN   978-0-521-29719-6.
  13. ↑ "Definition of HABANERO". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2022-10-21.
  14. ↑ Huebner, Thom; Ferguson, Charles A. (1 January 1991). Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 124. ISBN   978-90-272-2463-7.
  15. ↑ Arsenijević, Boban (2016-01-18). "Burek koji se može poneti".
  16. ↑ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). Language contact and lexical enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave studies in language history and language change. New York, N.Y: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 77. ISBN   978-1-4039-1723-2.
  17. ↑ Penny, Ralph (2000). Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-78045-2.
  18. ↑ Lipski, John M. (1997). "En busca de las normas fonéticas del español" (PDF). In Colombi, M. Cecilia; Alarconi, Francisco X. (eds.). La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes : praxis y teoría (in Spanish). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 121–132. ISBN   9780669398441.
  19. ↑ Eric Spitznagel (November 27, 2009). "Motley Crue's Vince Neil is Finally Bored With Boobs". Vanity Fair.
  20. ↑ "Frågelådan". www4.isof.se. Retrieved 2021-09-22.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.