Being Have

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Becky and I’m calling from Idaho.

Hello, Becky.

Hi, Becky.

From where in Idaho?

Idaho Falls, so it’s southeast Idaho.

Okay, very good.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

So I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, in central Pennsylvania, and I was regularly asked if I was being haze.

So this was kind of an endearing question.

So my older uncles of the especially rural variety would ask me this question.

And I thought it was normal growing up.

And then I moved away and started asking other people if they were B and Have.

And they thought it was the hokiest thing.

So I’m wondering how behaving became B and Have.

Oh, good, good, good, good one.

What’s your guess?

I have no idea.

I’ve done some research on the Internet about it and haven’t found anything.

Well, the word you want to look for if you’re looking this one up is re-analysis, re-analysis, because what’s happening here, let me just set up this scenario.

You’re a parent, you’ve got a child, and you’re constantly giving them the commands, be still, be quiet, behave, right?

And the first two are verb plus adjective, right? Verb plus adjective.

But the last one is a verb all on its own.

But to the kid, it sounds like verb plus adjective.

And so that’s how they analyze it when they’re very young, say two, three, maybe a little older than that.

And they’ll say, I am being Hav.

I behave all the time.

Because it sounds like Hav is an adjective.

And these kind of reanalyses are pretty common with kids.

They’re looking for regular patterns.

They’re trying to synthesize the rules of language, just kind of understand them through experience.

It’s so well known, in fact, this kind of reanalysis of the word behave that it pops up in virtually every textbook that I’ve ever read on children’s language or the psychology or the mental development of children.

It’s really common.

Wow.

Is there a reason why I would have only heard it in that specific geographic location?

Coincidence?

Just pure chance because you don’t have your own kids or you don’t have a lot of exposure to, as an adult, to other kids.

But it’s something that will probably get a lot of emails going,

Oh, yeah, my child did that, or I remember doing that when I was a kid,

Because it’s really common.

So the parent then, because the child was interpreting it that way,

Would kind of repeat it back in the same way?

Yeah. Well, as a parent, you—I don’t know if you have kids of your own,

But as a parent, you often latch on to the little cute things that your kids say,

And you adore them.

They’re very charming, and they make perfect sense.

And they’re funny because you get the kid’s logic, but it goes against what you know to be true about the word, about how language is supposed to work.

Yeah, so maybe you said it when you were little and the whole family just picked up on that.

Yeah, and I wonder if your uncles or your family, it’s like it started with some young member of their family at that level years ago, and they just kept on saying it because it was funny and cute.

Wow, that’s so interesting.

There’s another one that happens, and I’ve heard this from numerous families, and it happened in my family with my son.

We would say things like, you know, when he was two or three,

Do you want me to hold you?

And after a while, he would throw up his little arms,

Little chubby arms, and he’d say, hold you?

Because to him, do you want me to hold you?

Hold you sounded like one word that was a verb.

Wow.

And so he thought hold you was all he needed, you know.

Hold you.

Hold you.

Oh, that’s so cute.

So, yeah, the word you want is reanalysis.

And just do reanalysis, behave, and you’ll come up with a bunch of hits on it.

That is so interesting.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

You’re welcome.

Thanks for calling, Becky.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you.

Bye.

Well, we’re being haved over here.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.