Phonological Processes as Distortional Devices in Language Games

Language games are forms of language that systematically manipulate normal spoken words in order to make them illegible by others. These languages highlight a good number of phonological processes employed by speakers of language games to distort source words. Among these processes are epenthesis, gemination, consonant insertion, and metathesis. The current study proceeds to verify the hypotheses that these processes are already present in normal language and that these processes take place in a systematic manner yielding uniform patterns. The collected data and the literature include a wide range of database out of which instances of distortional pieces of speech can be drawn and described. The conclusion reached out in this study is that these processes provide some insight into the structure of the source languages or dialects on which the language games are based.