SLIP OF THE TONGUE

SLIP OF THE TONGUE. An unintended MISTAKE made in speaking, sometimes trivial, sometimes amusing: This hasn't solved any answers (rather than problems, questions); a great floating lunk (blending lump and hunk). Normal speech contains a fairly large number of such slips, which mostly pass unnoticed. The errors fall into patterns, and can be divided into: selection errors and as semblage errors. Selection errors may involve: (1) Meaning: crossword instead of ‘jigsaw’. (2) Sound: cylinders for ‘syllables’. (3) Both of these: badger for ‘beaver’. (4) Blends of two similar words: torrible for ‘terrible’ and ‘horrible’. Of these, errors in sound, usually called malapropisms, are probably the best known. Such errors suggest that meaning and sound are only partially linked in the mind, and also that the linking up involves the activation of a number of words which are similar to the target (the word sought). Among assemblage errors, common patterns are: (1) Anticipations, with a word or sound coming in too soon: crounty cricket for ‘county cricket’. (2) Perseverations, with a word or sound repeated: beef needle soup for ‘beef noodle soup’. (3) Transpositions, with words or sounds transposed: to gap the bridge for ‘to bridge the gap’; hole of rostess for ‘role of hostess’. The best-known of these are the sound transpositions called spoonerisms. These errors indicate that chunks of speech are preprepared for utterance, possibly in a tone group (a group of words spoken within the same intonation pattern), and that the activated words are organized in accordance with a rhythmic principle. See FREUDIAN SLIP.