metathesiksessä

Metathesis, in linguistics, is a phonological process in which two sounds exchange positions within a word or across adjacent sounds. The form metathesiksessä is the Finnish locative construction meaning “in metathesis” and is used when discussing the phenomenon in Finnish-language texts.

Metathesis occurs in many languages and can affect consonants, vowels, or entire syllable sequences. It is often described as both a synchronic variation and a diachronic sound change, with historical shifts and speech errors contributing to observed patterns. Types include consonant metathesis (swap of two consonants), vowel metathesis (swap of neighboring vowels), and cluster metathesis (reordering of consonant clusters).

Causes include articulatory ease, perceptual salience, analogy among speakers, or language contact. Metathesis can arise during language acquisition, in rapid speech, or through reanalysis of unfamiliar words, and can become regularized in a dialect or language over time.

Examples are found across languages. In English, the word ask has appeared as aks in some dialects, illustrating consonant metathesis. The pronunciation of spaghetti as pasghetti is often cited as a metathesis of the initial consonant cluster sp. In some languages, metathesis is a productive rule or a conventional variant in certain dialects, and it can influence spelling through historical pronunciations.

Research on metathesis spans historical and theoretical phonology, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. It helps explain irregular phoneme sequences and sociolinguistic variation, contributing to broader theories of phonological change and speech processing.

Etymology: metathesis derives from Greek meta “change” and thesis “placing.”