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There are several words in the English which have been created as a "merging" of multiple existing words.
e.g. Insofar- Merged from words "in, so, far".
How do such words come about?
It surely can't simply be a matter of a mistake growing in usage so much that it is eventually accepted as valid, because there are so many examples for which this has not happened.
e.g. "alot"- This is not a valid word, although it is commonly written.
The compounding is one of the ways new words are formed, nothing mystical here. If you look at various English compounds and how they are formed you will notice that these are different compared to your example.
If you compare "a lot" and "alot" you will find that this is not a matter of compounding, here the compounding of the meaning is not pronounced, but this is a change of grammar that would go against rules that govern phrases such as "a little" and "a few".
Finally, I am not sure but I think that such change does not occur also because it would change the emphasis - "alot" vs "a lot".
ə ˈlɒt vs ?əlˈɒt, but it seems obvious that insofar did not have to change the pronunciation at all.
– Unreason
Nov 28 '11 at 12:49
This usually happens when an expression survives its origin, i.e. the expression still has a meaning to most peope, but that way of forming an expression has more or less come out of use, so few people know how the expression came to be.
When the spaces between the words in an expression like in so far no longer serves a purpose, they tend to go away.
The form alot is however not likely to be accepted as correct, as it's formed from a mistake rather than changing dynamically into a new form.
