Pronunciation watch

[french frank]

Three posts all with the same time... Should add the OED gives the form with the hyphen as an alternative. My judgement is that the BBC linguists are off the hook!

[JFLL]

You could look at it this way, Lat. If someone ‘over-corrects’ his pronunciation of a word, he is intending to pronounce it correctly (not ‘over-correctly’), but mistakenly ‘overshoots’ the mark. In being too anxious to be correct, he makes a mistake ('Over' in the sense of 'too'). ‘Over-correction’ would do as well as ‘hyper-correction’, but of course linguists, like all specialists, like a technical term to have a suitably learned and mysterious aura. As ff says, though, it's a well-established term in linguistics. (A pedant might complain that ‘hypercorrection’ is a miserable hybrid, and should have been ‘supercorrection’, since ‘hyper’ is Greek in origin and ‘correction’ is Latin.)

[Lateralthinking1]

All helpful but I don't think I will sleep easily.

One of the problems I have with it, hactually, is the heavy hint that children should not be asked to get things right if they will make mistakes in doing so. Another now is in the extent to which words are supposed to denote intention rather than actuality. If I really concentrated on a putt and became so self-conscious that I took eight putts, I doubt that observers would feel in, say, non-linguistic terms that I had been hyper-correct. I feel that it is jargon but, alas, accept that this is a hyper-standard world.

[jean]

...the heavy hint that children should not be asked to get things right if they will make mistakes in doing so...

I don't think anyone suggested that!

A little learning is indeed a dangerous thing, but no learning at all isn't the only alternative!

...the extent to which words are supposed to denote intention rather than actuality...

They've always been able to do both those things, and more.

J L Austin's How to do things with words is a good starting-point:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/faculty/longworth/austin_keythinkers.pdf

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

All helpful but I don't think I will sleep easily.

Well you deserve a good night's sleep after writing the last two words.
Good to know that someone respects the English language.

[french frank]

Well you deserve a good night's sleep after writing the last two words.
Good to know that someone respects the English language.

We can argue for ever on that! I still prefer to think of certain usages as 'colloquialisms' rather than as ungrammatical. Easy as an adverb is well attested. And it's the colloquialisms and vulgar usages that contribute to the evolution of languages. Without it, the Italians, for example, could still be speaking Latin.

Go easy? Easy does it? These expressions often have a slightly different meaning compared with the 'grammatical' versions- 'easily does it'?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well maybe, but I don't much like the idea that the evolution of language is mainly influenced by the sloppy speakers who never bothered to listen at school.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Without it, the Italians, for example, could still be speaking Latin.

At least I would be able to make myself understood in Italy.

[gurnemanz]

Well maybe, but I don't much like the idea that the evolution of language is mainly influenced by the sloppy speakers who never bothered to listen at school.

I assume that it is by this process of evolution that our definite article gradually mutated into "the", a rather unattractive word, devoid of number, gender or case and with no proper vowel sound, surviving because it is functional and is easily mastered by the sloppy.

[JFLL]

I assume that it is by this process of evolution that our definite article gradually mutated into "the", a rather unattractive word, devoid of number, gender or case and with no proper vowel sound, surviving because it is functional and is easily mastered by the sloppy.

But ‘the’ couldn’t be inflected for gender or case, because these grammatical categories haven’t existed in English for hundreds of years (or, if so, only very marginally), and the ‘improper’ vowel sound of ‘the’ has likewise existed for at least a thousand years. So on these terms English itself might be described as ‘sloppy’ language?

[jean]

...Easy as an adverb is well attested...

It's certainly true that the belief that an adverb has to end in -ly is responsible for much egregious hypercorrection, but I don't necessarily think of easy as an adverb in this context.

If I sleep easily, I have no difficulty in getting to sleep. But if I sleep easy, I am relaxed as I sleep, untroubled, undisturbed by anxieties.

I usually manage this, being one of those of whom Shakespeare wrote

"...then happy low, lie down;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

[french frank]

If I sleep easily, I have no difficulty in getting to sleep. But if I sleep easy, I am relaxed as I sleep, untroubled, undisturbed by anxieties.

Yes, exactly my point about slightly different meanings. But EA seemed(?) to be implying that 'easily' was correct, whereas 'easy' wasn't.

As for 'sloppy', the Appendix Probi is a whole collection of sloppinesses.

[jean]

...But EA seemed(?) to be implying that 'easily' was correct, whereas 'easy' wasn't.

Yes, I thought so, too; but although I agree with you that easy can be an adverb, my point is that for this meaning, an adverb isn't what's wanted.

.

[french frank]

Yes, I thought so, too; but although I agree with you that easy can be an adverb, my point is that for this meaning, an adverb isn't what's wanted.

Short for 'easy in my mind'?

[Lateralthinking1]

Quite a few posts! Funnily enough, I didn't use 'sleep easily' with any point about the English language in mind. I do attempt to make points in a subtle way but that wasn't true in this case. I can see how 'easily' might be used for literal sleep and 'easy' for the idea of sleep - 'as if' - but much depends on the speaker. I sleep sporadically. In fact, I have just slept. I am not saying at all that this particular matter would ever have kept me from sleep. There is, though, in the case of a poor sleeper a clear overlap between the idea of not being wholly at ease with the consensus on something and literally not sleeping. It wouldn't exist in the thoughts or associations of a sound sleeper unless perhaps that person was writing with a poor sleeper in mind. It would then probably be designed rather than automatic. We are, therefore, back to the idea of intention rather than actuality, if that makes sense, but in a more individualistic way. How regrettable - but I hope it brings together all points made by recent contributors.