Metathesen

Metathesen are instances of metathesis, the phonological process in which two adjacent segments exchange positions within a word or across syllables. In German-language linguistics, Metathesen denotes multiple such instances; in English, the corresponding term is metathesis or metatheses. The phenomenon is found in many languages and can operate synchronically or diachronically, affecting consonants, vowels, or syllable structure.

Mechanisms and types: Metathesis can be phonetic, phonological, or lexicalized; it may arise from ease of articulation, perceptual similarity, phonotactic constraints, or historical sound change; it can be triggered by borrowing or dialectal variation; it may involve adjacent consonants, vowels, or entire syllables.

Examples: A well-cited English example is "ask" pronounced as "aks" in some dialects; another widely cited instance is "spaghetti" sometimes heard as "pasghetti" in casual speech; these are often described as metatheses or analyzed as hypercorrections depending on the framework.

Relation to other processes: Metathesen relate to broader sound-change phenomena, including cluster rearrangement, assimilation, and phonotactic reanalysis. Many metatheses are transient or dialectal; others become fixed lexical items.

See also: Metathesis, Sound change, Dialectology.