Examples of Analogical Language Change
Mechanism
Analogy: a word becomes more like another word, a set of words, or a morphological paradigm.
Examples
backformation: break a word into smaller pieces perceiving a derivation that didn’t actually happen as one that did happen, yielding new roots in the process
(1) “editor” -> “edit+or” and “edit” becomes a verb
(2) “burglar” -> “burgl+ar” and “burgle” becomes a verb (for some)
reanalysis: reinterpret adjacent sounds
(1) “an ewt” -> “a newt”
folk etymology: interpret a foreignism using the closest thing your language has to that form even there is no meaningful relation between the forms
(1) Spanish “charqui” -> English “(beef) jerky”
(2) Latin ultra (“beyond”) + age (noun suffix) -> French “outr|age” (“insult”) -> English “out|rage” (more like “outburst” than “insult”)
blending: combine salient parts from two words to yield a new one
“smoke” + “fog” -> “smog”
hypercorrection: overcompensate while avoiding a particular error
(1) While avoiding the “fella/yella” pronounciation of “fellow/yellow”, some dialects overgeneralize the correction a pronounce “umbrella” as “umbrellow”.
(2) Similarly, while avoiding the “han’/fin’/roun’” pronunciations of “hand/find/round”, some dialects pronounce “drown/drowned” as “drownd/drownded”.
