ABSTRACT
In 1894 I wrote an article “Om subtraktions-dannelser, særligt pa dansk og engelsk” in “Festskrift til Vilhelm Thomsen. I used the word subtraction to denote the phenomenon that a new word or form was equal to an older form minus something which had been (mistakenly) apprehended as an inflectional or derivational element and had therefore been discarded, thus the same phenomenon which is now generally called back-formation with a happy term invented by Dr. (later Sir James) Murray. In later books I have treated the phenomenon as a subdivision of the more general term “metanalysis”, by which I mean that words or wordgroups are by a new generation analyzed differently from the analysis of a former age (see Mod. Engl. Gr. II, p. 141, Language, p. 173). Metanalysis may lead to addition (lengthening) as well as to subtraction (shortening) and to changes which are neither (e. g. semantic changes).
