Copyright © 2003 by K. Stromswold
Psychology of Language Lab 6: Lexicon 2
Slips of the Tongue, Tip of the Tongue,
& Slips of the Ear
1. Slips of the tongue. We have
learned about many different types of speech errors or ’Äúslips of the
tongue.’Äù Some of these errors appear
to be clearly phonological (e.g., saying ’Äúredding wing’Äù for ’Äúwedding ring’Äù)
whereas others appear to be more semantic in nature (e.g., saying ’Äúfingers’Äù for
’Äútoes’Äù) or to be malapropisms (e.g., saying ’Äúvulnerable scholar’Äù for
"venerable scholar’Äù). Listen
carefully to people when they talk and record any possible examples of speech
errors that you hear (minimum: 3
examples). For each potential
speech error, record what the person actually said, what you think the speaker
intended to say, and the context in which the error occurred. If possible, ask the person who made
the error if s/he was aware of making an error and what s/he intended to
say. For each speech error you
record, classify each error using the terminology mentioned in the readings and
describe what that error tells us about the cognitive and/or psychological
nature of speech production.
[Hint: Listen for examples
of speech errors by lecturers.]
Appendices 2 and 3 provide useful information about the phonetics of
English.
Here is a hypothetical
example:
Target: ’Äúwedding ring’Äù Error: ’Äúredding wing’Äù
Awareness: speaker was aware of error and
self-corrected
Context in
which said: late at night when
speaker was tired
Type of
error: sound substitution
Significance of error:
’Ä¢[w] and [r] are
minimally distinctive sounds (i.e., they share many of the same features). Thus, the substitution is evidence for
the psychological reality of distinctive features analysis of speech sounds.
’Ä¢ The error involves substitutions of initial sound of two
words. This suggests that the
mechanism that generates speech may represent the beginnings and ends of
words.
’Ä¢ The two words
involved in the substitution are in the same phrase and clause. This suggests that the phrase and/or
clause level is represented by the speech production mechanism.
If you can’Äôt
think of any slips of the tongue, you may use examples from the following URLS
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/linguistics/lectures/05lect16.html
http://www.lsadc.org/Fromkin.html
2. Tip-of-tongue (TOT) phenomenon. Most people
experience having a word on the ’Äútip of the tongue’Äù at least several times a
week. Record as many cases as you
can of yourself (and your friends) in the TOT state (minimum: 3 cases). [Hint: If
you are having trouble collecting cases of TOT, try to remember the names of people you
haven’Äôt seen in a long time or the technical terms used in classes you took a
while ago.]
For each case,
give your best guess as to
’Ä¢ the first letter
of the word
’Ä¢ the last letter
of the word
’Ä¢ the number of
letters in the word
’Ä¢ the number of syllables in the word
’Ä¢ the stress
pattern of the word
’Ä¢ the meaning of
the word (or list other words with similar or related meanings)
’Ä¢ similar sounding words
If you arrive
at the word you are looking for, record the sought-after word.
What do your
results suggest about lexical storage and retrival?
3. Slips of the
ear. Normally,
segmenting the speech stream into words is easy but occasionally, our
brain/ears don't get it quite right.
This is often true for song lyrics, poetry, famous speeches, etc. In fact, there is a term for
misunderstood song lyrics (a mondegreen).
In his book The Langugage Instinct,
Pinker gives the example of someone misparsing the line from the Beatles song
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
"A
girl with kaleidoscope eyes" as: "A girl with colitis goes by"
Come up with at least three additional examples. For each example,
try to account for the confusion.
If you have really tried, and can’Äôt recall
any of your own mondegreens, the following URLs list
lots of commonly misunderstood song lyrics:
http://www.rulefortytwo.com/mondegreens.htm
http://www.rulefortytwo.com/mondegreenhall.htm
http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/lyrics/mondegreens.html
http://strangeways.tripod.com/mondegreens.html