Hypercorrection

In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application 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 is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal or educated.[1][2]

This article is about language usage. For the psychology use, see Hypercorrection (psychology).

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 over-applied rules

Studies in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have noted the over-application 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 (aka 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]

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 the section § Personal pronouns below.[4]

Hypercorrection can also occur when learners of a new-to-them (aka 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 his or her 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 laying down and codifying norms for standard usage, unlike some other languages, such as Arabic (مجمع اللغة العربية), French (Académie française and Office québécois de la langue française), Hebrew (הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית), Italian (Accademia della Crusca), Icelandic (Íslensk málstöð), and Spanish (Real Academia Española). 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."

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 "me and you" 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]

On the other hand, 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 "Those 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 "h" to a word which would not normally have an initial "h". An example of this can be found in the speech of the character Parker in Thunderbirds, e.g. "We'll 'ave the h'aristocrats '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]

Hyperforeignism
Main article: 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.[11] For example, habanero is sometimes pronounced as though it were spelled ⟨habañero⟩, in imitation of other Spanish words like jalapeño and piñata.[12] Machismo is sometimes pronounced 'makizmo', apparently as if it were Italian, rather than the phonetic English pronunciation which resembles the original Spanish word.

English as a second language

Some English-Spanish cognates primarily differ by beginning with "s" vs. "es", such as the English word "spectacular" and the Spanish word "espectacular". A native Spanish speaker may conscientiously hypercorrect for the word "establish" by writing or saying "stablish", which is archaic, or an informal pronunciation in some dialects.[13]

Serbo-Croatian

As the locative case is rarely found in vernacular usage in southern and eastern dialects of Serbia, and accusative is used instead, speakers tend to overcorrect when trying to deploy the standard variety of the language in more formal occasions, thus using locative even when accusative should be used (typically, when indicating direction rather than location): "Izlazim na kolovozu" instead of "izlazim na kolovoz".[14]

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):[15]

  • the hypercorrect pronunciation khupím instead of khofím for חופים "beaches".
  • the hypercorrect pronunciation tsorfát instead of tsarfát for צרפת "France".
  • the hypercorrect pronunciation amán instead of omán for אמן "artist".

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. On the other hand, 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.

  1. The consistent pronunciation of all forms of qamatz as /a/, disregarding qatan and hataf forms, could be seen as a hypercorrection when Hebrew speakers of Ashkenazic origin attempt to pronounce Sephardic Hebrew, for example, צָהֳרָיִם, "midday" as "tzaharayim", rather than "tzohorayim" as in standard Israeli pronunciation; the traditional Sephardi pronunciation is "tzahorayim". This may, however, be an example of oversimplification rather than of hypercorrection.
  2. Conversely, many older British Jews consider it more colloquial and "down-home" to say "Shobbes", "cholla" and "motza", though the vowel in these words is in fact a patach, which is rendered as /a/ in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Hebrew.

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, 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].[16]

Swedish

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

The third person plural pronoun, pronounced "dom" in many dialects, is formally spelled "de" in the subjective case and "dem" in the objective case. Informally it can be spelled "dom" ("Dom tycker om mig.") When spelled more formally, they are often confused with each other. ("Dem tycker om mig.*")

See also

References

Citations
  1. Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press.
  2. Sociolinguistic Patterns, William Labov, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972, p 126
  3. Menner, Robert J. (1937). "Hypercorrect forms in American English". American Speech. 12 (3): 167–78. doi:10.2307/452423. JSTOR 452423.
  4. "hypercorrection". Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield, Massachusetts, US: Merriam-Webster. 1994. ISBN 978-0-87779-132-4.
  5. Kory Stamper. Ask the editor: octopus. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
  6. Social Stratification of English in New York City (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006 [1966]. ISBN 978-0-521-52805-4.
  7. Interlanguage Phonology Sources of L2 Pronunciation "Errors", by Michael Carey
  8. "March 11, 2004 – Hypercorrection", www.voanews.com, 12 March 2004.
  9. Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; ISBN 0-521-61288-8), 107.
  10. "David Graham site". Retrieved 5 March 2013.
  11. Wells, John Christopher (1982). Accents of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-521-29719-6.
  12. www.merriam-webster.com: habanero (variant spelling)
  13. Thom Huebner; Charles A. Ferguson (1 January 1991). Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 124–. ISBN 978-90-272-2463-7.
  14. Boban Arsenijević (2016-01-18). "Burek koji se može poneti".
  15. See p. 77 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan.
  16. Penny, Ralph (2000). Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78045-2.

Sources cited
  • Labov, William. 1966. "Hypercorrection by the Lower Middle Class as a Factor in Linguistic Change". In Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964. William Bright, ed. Pp. 84–113. The Hague: Mouton.
  • Joshua Blau, On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1970.
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