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From: td@alice.UUCP (Tom Duff)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: a newt and an adder
Message-ID: <3891@alice.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 13:01:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: alice.3891
Posted: Mon Jun 24 13:01:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Jun-85 07:50:01 EDT
References: <348@spar.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 7

>  An instance where the ancient dative inflexional -n  was transferred from
>  the definite article to the beginning of the following word is `nonce', in
>  the expression:
>
>      	       for the nonce <=  for then ones,once
In fact, the process of shifting the N back and forth between noun and article
is referred to by linguists as `noncing' after this example.