{"id":31656,"date":"2022-10-24T02:19:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=31656"},"modified":"2022-11-03T14:21:09","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T14:21:09","slug":"why-do-people-have-slips-of-the-tongue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-do-people-have-slips-of-the-tongue\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do people have slips of the\u00a0tongue?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cecile McKee<\/a>, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you visited Yew Nork? Does your stummy ache? What dog of bag food will we get?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you\u2019ve wondered what causes such speech errors or slips of the tongue, you might like to know that all speakers \u2013 of all ages and abilities \u2013 make them sometimes. Even people who use a sign language<\/a> produce what some call \u201cslips of the hand.\u201d Slips are a common feature of language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a developmental psycholinguist who studies how people use language, I<\/a> am interested in what speech errors tell us about the human mind. Research shows that language users store and retrieve different units of language. These include small ones like single consonants, and big ones like phrases made of several words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exchanges and blends of sounds and words<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One way to think about speech errors is in terms of the linguistic units that each involves. Another way to think about them is in terms of the actions affecting these units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cYew Nork<\/a>\u201d slip shows consonant sounds switching places \u2013 a sound exchange. Notice that each of the consonants is first in its own syllable. The \u201cdog of bag food<\/a>\u201d slip shows a word exchange. Notice that both words are nouns. Vowel sounds can also switch places, as when a speaker who meant \u201cfeed the pooch\u201d said, \u201cfood the peach<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cstummy<\/a>\u201d slip blends the synonyms \u201cstomach\u201d and \u201ctummy.\u201d Phrases can also blend, as in \u201cIt depends on the day of the mood I\u2019m in<\/a>.\u201d The speaker who said this had in mind both \u201cthe day of the week\u201d and \u201cthe mood I\u2019m in,\u201d but with only one mouth for the two messages to pass through, he blended the phrases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Substitutions by meaning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another way to think about speech errors is in terms of what influences them. Substitutions of one word for another can illustrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone who meant to refer to fingers said instead, \u201cDon\u2019t burn your toes<\/a>.\u201d The words \u201ctoe\u201d and \u201cfinger\u201d don\u2019t sound alike, but they name similar body parts. In fact, Latin used the same word, \u201cdigitus,\u201d to refer to digits of the hands and digits of the feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This word substitution \u2013 and thousands like it \u2013 suggests that our mental dictionaries link words with related meanings. In other words, semantic connections can influence speech errors. The speaker here was trying to get the word \u201cfinger\u201d from the body-part section of his mental dictionary and slipped over to its semantic neighbor \u201ctoe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Substitutions by sound<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another type of word substitution reveals something else about our mental dictionaries. Someone who meant to refer to his mustache said instead, \u201cI got whipped cream on my mushroom<\/a>.\u201d The words \u201cmustache\u201d and \u201cmushroom\u201d sound similar. Each word starts with the same consonant and vowel, denoted as \u201c[m\u028c]\u201d in the International Phonetic Alphabet<\/a>. Each word is two syllables long with stress on the first syllable. But the meanings of these two words are not similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This word substitution \u2013 and thousands like it \u2013 suggests that our mental dictionaries also link words with similar sounds. In other words, phonological connections can influence speech errors. The speaker here was trying to get the word \u201cmustache\u201d from the \u201c[m\u028c]\u201d section of his mental dictionary and slipped over to its phonological neighbor \u201cmushroom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insights from variety<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Psycholinguists who collect and analyze speech errors<\/a> find many ways to categorize them and to explain how and why people make them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like to compare that effort with how Charles Darwin studied Gal\u00e1pagos finches<\/a>. Studying speech errors and finches in detail reveals how tiny variations distinguish them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theories of how people talk seek to explain those details. Psycholinguists distinguish slips by the linguistic units that they involve, such as consonants, vowels, words and phrases. They describe how and when speakers use such information. This can help us understand how language develops in children and how it breaks down in people with certain impairments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These theories also describe different stages for planning and producing sentences<\/a>. For example, psycholinguists hypothesize that speakers start with what they want to convey. Then they retrieve word meanings from a mental dictionary. They arrange the words according to the grammar of the language they\u2019re speaking. How words sound and the rhythm of whole sentences are later stages. If this is right, the \u201cfinger-toe\u201d substitution reflects an earlier stage than the \u201cmustache-mushroom\u201d substitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study of speech errors reminds us that glitches happen now and then in every complex behavior. When you walk, you sometimes trip. When you talk, you sometimes slip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cecile McKee<\/a>, Professor of Linguistics, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cecile McKee, University of Arizona Have you visited Yew Nork? Does your stummy ache? What dog of bag food will we get? In case you\u2019ve wondered what causes such speech errors or slips of the tongue, you might like to know that all speakers \u2013 of all ages and abilities \u2013 make them sometimes. Even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[12799,3173,2755,12800,6040,12798],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31658,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31656\/revisions\/31658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}