Junctural Metanalysis

In an earlier post I expressed wonder at the human brain's ability to parse a stream of spoken sounds and hear them as a sequence of recognised words that convey meaning. Sometimes, it seems, the process fails. For instance, there are a number of modern English words that arise from misplacing the space between the indefinite article 'an' and a noun with an initial vowel. Take the word newt, for example. The noun was once ewt, from the Old English eft, but 'an ewt' became 'a newt'. Sometimes it works the other way round. For instance, 'an adder' was once 'a nadder' from the Old English word naedre for a snake. In everyday parlance, his process is called rebracketing, false splitting or misdivision, rather than the technical name of the title.

Many nice examples can be found in this Wikipedia rebracketing article, including the derivation of the expression apple pie order from a mishearing of the French nappes-pliées, meaning "neatly folden linen". (I wonder if you can mis(s)hear sheep.)