Eggcorn Forum

Cute one. But not an eggcorn unless she thinks that turtles are diurnal. Turtles themselves don’t help here, different sorts being nocturnal or diurnal, or sometimes both depending on the particular behaviour (we all know about the night-time egg-laying on those tropical beaches). Your friend’s daughter is following the eggcorner’s modus operandi but the connection to the meaning of “nocturnal” is probably not there.

One similar example:

Class project report: ” Most animals are nocturtle. Mean they sleep during the day to avoid the desert harsh heat/coldness and dryness the desert offers.”

Plus several parents and teachers telling stories about kids who said animals were “nocturtle.”

Last edited by kem (2010-01-22 00:06:50)

Sorry. I should have clarified. “not a turtle=nocturnal”. Is this an eggcorn?

I tend to your viewpoint on this, Joe. Even if it would not be an eggcorn if committed by someone with a wider knowledge of “nocturnal”’s contexts (including its opposition with the notion if not the word diurnal ), it is the same sort of linguistic/cognitive mechanism at work with the child’s dataset as input. As with so many other issues, though, it becomes a matter of definition.
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So now you have a David on either side of the issue. Serendymmetry, I guess.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-01-24 17:14:00)

Joe wrote:

At this point, I’d sure like to know what the linguists on Language Log believe—or have said—on this topic of consistency.

Well, I can’t vouch for the last two years or so of Language Log since I stopped reading it about then. (I didn’t stop enjoying it—I was just spending too much time online.) But in 2005-6 I set out to read all the LL articles on eggcorns written up to that point, using their search engine to find them. And while I wasn’t always convinced by the things sometimes put forth as eggcorns by all writers on LL (though I don’t recall disagreeing strongly with Mark Liberman on any of his eggcorn IDs), I don’t remember any time when one of the LL writers labeled as an “eggcorn” something that they admitted wouldn’t make sense to most people in context. That would have stuck out for me—I was reading for just that kind of instance—and I think Liberman, Zwicky and Zimmer are all pretty consistent in implying that an eggcorn has to make some sense in context for an outside observer. I don’t believe they ever talked about the kind of consistency that Joe’s referring to for the simple reason that it wasn’t part of their definition of eggcorns. In fact, till now, David Tuggy was the only person I’d ever encountered who felt that the meaning of the term should be expanded to include a reshaper’s own idea of what makes sense. (Why not just coin a new term for the expanded sense?) For me, the problem with that is obvious—couldn’t you argue that every malaprop makes some measure of sense to its users? Why else are they using them? And how are we possibly to determine when people think they’re making more or less sense with nonstandard forms? Even David Tuggy has occasionally rejected some suggested eggcorn candidates as non-eggcorn malaprops, but I don’t see how you could employ his expanded defintiion of eggcorn consistently and still make that determination; if you’re defining eggcorns from the “inside,” then only the person on the inside—the person using the nonstandard form—is in the position to say whether something is an eggcorn. I think that’s unworkable (though I like the way it verges on the metaphysical). I prefer the standing definition of eggcorn because it has a practicality the expanded sense seems to me to lack.

While the LL definition of eggcorn was based on choices—it’s of course not a Platonic category someone discovered—those choices I think have pretty much worked their way into the DNA of the term as used by most people who are interested in the way language changes. So while I guess there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, wait, let’s change how most people use this term!,” I think it’s about 5 years too late to make such an effort effective. I for one don’t plan on budging an inch: an eggcorn has to make sense in context to an outside observer who understands the acorn. Eggcorns aren’t turtles, and “notaturtle” ain’t an eggcorn.

Joe—Back before Language Log’s successful world conquest, the amazing Mark Liberman would answer pretty much any email LL readers sent him. I doubt he can still do that. But if you’re really interested, I think there’s a decent chance he’d give you an opinion on notaturtle. Arnold Zwicky might also be willing to talk about it, but my experience with getting email responses from him has been more miss than hit.

For me a classic malapropism, like “the allegory on the banks of the Nile” is not an eggcorn because the speaker herself does not know what an allegory is: the word is just her best guess at pronouncing “alligator” (meaning, of course ‘crocodile’). She is not thinking ALLEGORY ‘story exhibiting parallels to some reality’ and making sense of that in the context of the banks of the Nile.
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But the kid thinking a bat or an owl is “not a turtle” is indeed thinking NOT A TURTLE, and making sense of that in the context.
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“Allegory” is funny to me as an outsider precisely because it does not make sense. But “not a turtle” is funny to me because it does make sense. That sense doesn’t fit other contexts of use of “nocturnal”, particularly its opposition with “diurnal”. That fact is not irrelevant, but it needn’t be criterial for eggcorn status. Depends on definitions.
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LATER: I see I overlapped with Joe posting. I think we are saying about the same thing.

Eggcorns always use the dictionary definition of words so they should have the same meaning to both the utterer (internal person) and the listener (external person). The other element here is that the external person recognizes that the words resemble an idiom (or in-the-language expression)—while the internal person only thinks they are idiomatic / in-the-language. So, to me, the key element of an eggcorn is just that: that someone external to the utterer recognizes how the words resemble an idiom.

Yes. Allegory has one meaning to Mrs. Malaprop (CROCODILE), and another to me as an ‘external person’: however I also recognize that the she had probably heard and thinks she is reproducing “alligator”. Not a turtle has the same meaning to both the pre-schooler and me: in addition I recognize that the pre-schooler had probably heard and thinks he is reproducing “nocturnal”.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-01-24 23:04:18)