Slips of the Tongue - A Classification

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Slips of the tongue, language: English, abstract: Whenever people fail to utter the message they wanted to convey correctly, they apologize

and tend to explain their accidental mistake as a slip of the tongue. However, what is meant

and covered by this term which is used so often to refer to speech errors? Does its universality

suggest that all tongue slips are of the same kind? If not, how can they be distinguished?

This term paper will try to give a more detailed categorization of speech anomalies, first

providing a definition what is generally seen as a slip of the tongue. It will be shown, who

were the first linguists to examine this topic and what discoveries were made.

In order to give an own precise classification of speech errors, different approaches for

main categorizations will be presented and taken into consideration. On the basis of these

main categories, further sub-categories are elaborated and illustrated with examples given by

different authors in order to explain every feature appropriately. Since many authors still not

agree upon a common sub-classification, this term paper will select the most suitable terms

and definitions, try to compromise about the most common ones and give suggestions for

further distinctions. To be conforming to the majority of the literature, the most common

terminology shall be used. However, if provided terms are inappropriate or imprecise, they

will be modified.

The types of speech errors will be ordered via the main class they belong to. They will be

presented as sub-classes, defined, explained and illustrated by examples in detail. Examples

are marked with ordinals. The incorrect utterance is always presented with an asterisk and

followed by the proper realization in brackets. The pronunciation of the slips is written in

graphemes, i.e. normally written words, as far as this is possible to convey the mistake. Where

no written equivalent can be found, square brackets will be used for the transcription of the

speech error.

After all issues of one main category have been elaborated, rules and general remarks

which apply to all of them will be stated.

Finally, this term paper concludes which problems may occur when classifying slips of the

tongue and provide an outlook about what speech errors reveal about the speech production

process, the inner human lexicon and language universals. [...]