Hypercorrection - Wikipedia 29/12/2024, 11:28

Hypercorrection
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]

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]

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.

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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 .[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".

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

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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]

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the hypercorrect pronunciation khupím instead of khofím for ‫' חופים‬beaches'.

the hypercorrect pronunciation tsorfát instead of tsarfát for ‫' צרפת‬France'.
the hypercorrect pronunciation amán instead of omán for ‫' אמן‬artist'.
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.

The consistent pronunciation of all forms of qamatz as /a/, disregarding qatan and hataf
forms, could be seen as hypercorrections when Hebrew speakers of Ashkenazic origin
attempt to pronounce Sephardic Hebrew, for example, ‫ ָצה ֳָרי ִם‬, '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.
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 (‫ )שבט‬is mistakenly pronounced Shvas, as if it were spelled *‫שׁבַת‬ ְ . 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 ‫'( גדול‬large')
as goydl and ‫'( ברוך‬blessed') 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.

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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.*")

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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
Hypocorrection
English usage controversies
Eye dialect
List of English words with disputed usage
Mondegreen
Regularization (linguistics)
Shibboleth
Szadzenie

References

Citations
1. Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (https://web.
archive.org/web/20021120153706/https://www.bartleby.com/68/62/3062.html). Columbia
University Press. Archived from the original (http://www.bartleby.com/68/62/3062.html) 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 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F452423). JSTOR 452423 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/452423).
4. "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 (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2voh0q).
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' " (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20050702041001/http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/phonology
/interlanguage/pronerrors.html). Phonetics and Phonology. Macquarie University
Department of Linguistics. Archived from the original (http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/pho
netics/phonology/interlanguage/pronerrors.html) on 2 July 2005.
8. "Wordmaster: Hypercorrection Is Not Simply Being Fussy or a Nitpicker or a Pedant" (http://l
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8. "Wordmaster: Hypercorrection Is Not Simply Being Fussy or a Nitpicker or a Pedant" (http://l

earningenglish.voanews.com/content/a-23-2007-07-23-voa3-83133807/117349.html). VOA:
Learning English. 23 July 2007. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20121015120201/htt
p://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/a-23-2007-07-23-voa3-83133807/117349.html)
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 (https://www.worldcat.org/title/ocm57574762). Cambridge, UK; New York:
Cambridge University Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-521-84837-4. OCLC 57574762 (https://sea
rch.worldcat.org/oclc/57574762).
10. "Voiceover: Gerry Anderson" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130901173717/http://davidgrah
am.co/blog/?page_id=27). David Graham Official Site. Archived from the original (http://davi
dgraham.co/blog/?page_id=27) on 1 September 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
11. "The Beauty of Italian-American "Broken" English – Language Analysis" (https://hardcoreitali
ans.blog/2021/01/02/the-beauty-of-italian-american-broken-english-language-analysis/). 2
January 2021.
12. Wells, John Christopher (1982). Accents of English: An Introduction (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=UJQwf05yzqYC&q=Accents+of+English:+An+Introduction&pg=PA108).
Cambridge University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-521-29719-6.
13. "Definition of HABANERO" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/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 (https://books.google.com/books?id=6BGdnK
a2zcUC&pg=PA124). John Benjamins Publishing. p. 124. ISBN 978-90-272-2463-7.
15. Arsenijević, Boban (2016-01-18). "Burek koji se može poneti" (https://www.pismenica.rs/jezi
cke-nedoumice/boban-arsenijevic-burek-koji-se-moze-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" (https://johnlipski.git
hub.io/normas.pdf) (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" (http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/11/motley-crues-vince-neil-is-finally-bo
red-with-boobs). Vanity Fair.
20. "Frågelådan" (https://www4.isof.se/cgi-bin/srfl/visasvar.py?sok=dem&svar=79604&log_id=8
42877). www4.isof.se. Retrieved 2021-09-22.

Sources
Blau, Joshua (1970). On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages. Jerusalem:
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. ASIN B001B3JHWM (https://www.amazon.co
m/dp/B001B3JHWM).
Labov, William (1985). "HYPERCORRECTION BY THE LOWER MIDDLE CLASS AS A
FACTOR IN LINGUISTIC CHANGE". In Bright, William (ed.). Sociolinguistics: Proceedings

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of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964 (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10

.1515/9783110856507-008/html). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 84–113.
doi:10.1515/9783110856507-008 (https://doi.org/10.1515%2F9783110856507-008).
ISBN 978-3-11-085650-7. Retrieved 2024-09-04.

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