A metaplasm is generic term for almost any kind of alteration, whether intentional or unintentional, in the pronunciation or the
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
of a word.
The change may be phonetic only, such as pronouncing ''Mississippi'' as ''Missippi'' in English, or acceptance of a new word structure, such as the transformation from ''calidus'' in Latin to ''caldo'' (hot) in Italian. Orthographic metaplasms have been used in
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
to advance humanity's conceptual terrain, such as when
Derrida
Derrida is a surname shared by notable people listed below.
* Bernard Derrida (born 1952), French theoretical physicist
* Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), French philosopher
** ''Derrida'' (film), a 2002 American documentary film
* Marguerite Derri ...
adapted
Heidegger's Destruktion into
deconstruction
The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essen ...
or the French term ''différence'' into
différance
is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida. It is a central concept in Derrida's deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. The term means "difference and deferral of meaning."
Overview
Derrid ...
. Changes at either level may or may not be recognized in standard spelling, depending on the orthographic traditions of the language in question. Originally the term referred to techniques used in
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...
, or processes in those languages'
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...
.
Sound change
Many phonological changes found frequently in the natural development of languages are metaplasms:
*
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...
, addition of a sound to a word:
** beginning of a word (
prothesis)
** end (
paragoge
Paragoge (; from grc-gre, παραγωγή ''additional'': παρα- prefix ''para-'' 'extra', ἀγωγή ''agogē'' 'bringing in') is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. Often caused by nativization, it is a type of epenthesis, most ...
)
*
Synalepha
A synalepha or synaloepha is the merging of two syllables into one, especially when it causes two words to be pronounced as one.
The original meaning in Ancient Greek is more general than modern usage and includes coalescence of vowels within a ...
, two syllables becoming one, occurs by elision, crasis, synaeresis, or synizesis.
**
Elision
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
("
contraction
Contraction may refer to:
Linguistics
* Contraction (grammar), a shortened word
* Poetic contraction, omission of letters for poetic reasons
* Elision, omission of sounds
** Syncope (phonology), omission of sounds in a word
* Synalepha, merged ...
" in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
grammar), removal of a sound:
***beginning of a word (
apheresis)
*** middle (
syncope)
*** end (
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss ( elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", fro ...
).
**
Crasis
Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of ...
(Ancient Greek contraction), coalescence of two vowels into a new long vowel.
**
Synaeresis
In linguistics, synaeresis (; also spelled syneresis) is a phonological process of sound change in which two adjacent vowels within a word are ''combined'' into a single syllable.
The opposite process, in which two adjacent vowels are pronounce ...
, pronunciation of two vowels as a diphthong. Opposite:
diaeresis, pronunciation of a diphthong as two syllabic vowels.
**
Synizesis, pronunciation of two vowels that do not form a normal diphthong as one syllable, without change in writing. Opposite:
hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
* Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
* Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes''
* G ...
, distinct pronunciation of two adjacent vowels.
*
Metathesis, rearranging of sounds or features of sounds, may affect vowel lengths (
quantitative metathesis
Quantitative metathesis (or transfer of quantity)Smyth, ''Greek Grammar''paragraph 34on CCEL: transfer of quantity is a specific form of '' metathesis'' or ''transposition'' (a sound change) involving ''quantity'' or vowel length. By this process ...
).
Rhetoric
In
rhetoric
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...
, metaplasm is the modification of
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
for emphasis.
Romance languages
In the grammar of the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
, ''metaplasm'' may refer to change in the
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
of
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s from their original gender in Latin.
See also
*
Sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
Notes
{{reflist
Figures of speech
Phonology
ca:Fenomen fonètic