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Introduction: the purpose of this paper is to give readers a brief introduction to speech errors and state some conjectures about the role speech errors acts in the language production process.
1. A generalization of speech error
Speech errors, commonly referred to as slips of the tongue, are conscious or unconscious deviations from the apparently intended form of an utterance. They can be subdivided into spontaneously and inadvertently produced speech errors and intentionally produced word-plays or puns. Another distinction can be drawn between production and comprehension errors. Errors in speech production and perception are also called performance errors.
Within the field of psycholinguistics, speech errors fall under the category of language production. Types of speech errors include: exchange errors, perseveration, anticipation, shift, substitution, blends, additions, and deletions. The study of speech errors contributes to the establishment of models of speech production.
2. My own conjectures of speech errors as evidence of language production mechanism
a) My own conjectures
According to Fromkin(1971,1973)’s Model of Speech production, the process of planning speech can be viewed as a series of stages:
1. Identification of meaning—a meaning to be conveyed is generated.
2. Selection of a syntactic structure—a syntactic outline of the sentence is constructed, with word slots specified.
3. Generation of intonation contour—the stress values of different word slots are assigned.
4. Insertion of content words—appropriate nouns, verbs and adjectives are retrieved from the lexicon and placed into word slots.
5. Formation of affixes and function words—function words (articles, conjunctions, prepositions), prefixes, and suffixes are added.
6. Specification of phonetic segments—the sentence is expressed in terms of phonetic segments, according to phonological rules.
On the basis of his six-stage model and several analysis of speech error phenomenon, I conjecture that:
1) The last five stages as a whole are parallel with the first one. That is, identification of meaning goes independently of the other five stages. It’s occurring could precede them, or in a concurrent way , or even could be after them.
2) According to which level speech errors occurs on, they could be categorized into two types: psychodynamic-factor-related speech errors arising from the first stage and behavioristic-type-related speech errors arising from the last five stages. 3) Speech errors arising from the last five stages occur as a result of two major factors: one is behavioristic factor; the other is limitation of working memory.
b) Some examples for reasoning
i. acquisition of first and second language
We can observe from the process in which a child is acquiring his first language that, first he babbles, then he utters first simple words, after months he makes simple sentences without grammatical rules. He only learns those rules by repeated exposure to those speech sounds with rules and error correction for them. That is, he learns through a way of reinforcement and repetition. After years when he has become a fluent native speaker, he speaks grammatically perfect sentences without realizing what grammatical rules he has used on earth, he just pours them out spontaneously. This is quite a different result from the case of second language acquisition in which learners struggle to deal with those grammatical rules even when reaching an old age. As a result, learners of a second language tend to make much more speech errors than native speakers. And we are apt to presume that these errors mainly stem from the last 5 stages of Fromkin’s model, as there is no essential difference in the stage of identifying meaning comparing the two types of learning process.
ii. speech errors made unconsciously
We most people have the experiences that when we are speaking and talking, we often make speech errors. We even feel so astonished when our audiences directly point out those speech errors immediately after we made them that we just cannot believe what they state. We may strongly assert that we have indeed spoken what we intended to, however, it turned out that we failed, even if we could not remember at all. We can infer from these experiences that this type of speech errors probably occur at the sixth stage or at the level of articulating and the process of planning speech can be parallel with and totally independent of the process of articulation. However, the above mentioned occasion may hardly be confronted if there are processes of editing and self-monitoring, which would take longer time for the speaker to implement.
iii. Fluentness of uttering languages
Regarding the eight types of speech errors proposed by some scholars including Fromkin, I suggest all of these types are closely related with how fluently the speaker could speak that used language. The more fluently the speaker speaks, the more inclined the speech errors would be committed. We can infer this from the experiences that we would pay more attention to or arrange more capacity of working memory for the processing of the last five stages when we are not so familiar with the language being used. That is to say, in this situation, we tend to spend more time on editing and self-monitoring. In this way, if we can’t retrieve the right item from our internal lexicon, we may search for another item from a semantic aspect to replace the desired one. This is much a different case with that of the fluent speaker. A fluent speaker occupies much less capacity of working memory to deposit the words retrieved from internal lexicon. He just speaks in a spontaneous and automatic way to retrieve words and produce utterances without thinking too much. In this way, when the items he tries to utter have some properties inclined for him to confused in a phonetic way, he would then probably substitute a phonetically similar but wrong one for the right one , which results in various kinds of speech errors. Due to his large internal lexicon and quick retrieval, he substitutes totally in an unconscious way, which makes him more easy and inclined to substitute. iv. Tongue twister and singing songs
Considering the matter of tongue twister, you would find you can easily understand the meaning of the content of a twister when you read silently. However, you would also find it is hard to utter the sentences of it without speech errors. It is because you’re so unfamiliar with the articulation for sentences in which words are organized in a way hard for you to pronounce correctly. Your organs for articulation are struggling a lot. But after you practice a lot, you finally would overcome that obstacle, and becoming fluently in reading that twister aloud. From this twister example I would presume that the first stage of Fromkin’s model seems to be independent of the other five stages. Considering another case, singing songs, before we become familiar with the lyric of a song, we may sing out a wrong one. After we practice it a lot and have already remembered it, we often find we can sing the lyric out without consciously retrieving it. Sometimes only after we sing the lyric out do we start to think about the meaning of the lyric.
作者简介：李阅，硕士在读： 电子科技大学外国语学院外国语言学与应用语言学专业2010级 ，研究方向：应用语言学 跨文化交际。
1. A generalization of speech error
Speech errors, commonly referred to as slips of the tongue, are conscious or unconscious deviations from the apparently intended form of an utterance. They can be subdivided into spontaneously and inadvertently produced speech errors and intentionally produced word-plays or puns. Another distinction can be drawn between production and comprehension errors. Errors in speech production and perception are also called performance errors.
Within the field of psycholinguistics, speech errors fall under the category of language production. Types of speech errors include: exchange errors, perseveration, anticipation, shift, substitution, blends, additions, and deletions. The study of speech errors contributes to the establishment of models of speech production.
2. My own conjectures of speech errors as evidence of language production mechanism
a) My own conjectures
According to Fromkin(1971,1973)’s Model of Speech production, the process of planning speech can be viewed as a series of stages:
1. Identification of meaning—a meaning to be conveyed is generated.
2. Selection of a syntactic structure—a syntactic outline of the sentence is constructed, with word slots specified.
3. Generation of intonation contour—the stress values of different word slots are assigned.
4. Insertion of content words—appropriate nouns, verbs and adjectives are retrieved from the lexicon and placed into word slots.
5. Formation of affixes and function words—function words (articles, conjunctions, prepositions), prefixes, and suffixes are added.
6. Specification of phonetic segments—the sentence is expressed in terms of phonetic segments, according to phonological rules.
On the basis of his six-stage model and several analysis of speech error phenomenon, I conjecture that:
1) The last five stages as a whole are parallel with the first one. That is, identification of meaning goes independently of the other five stages. It’s occurring could precede them, or in a concurrent way , or even could be after them.
2) According to which level speech errors occurs on, they could be categorized into two types: psychodynamic-factor-related speech errors arising from the first stage and behavioristic-type-related speech errors arising from the last five stages. 3) Speech errors arising from the last five stages occur as a result of two major factors: one is behavioristic factor; the other is limitation of working memory.
b) Some examples for reasoning
i. acquisition of first and second language
We can observe from the process in which a child is acquiring his first language that, first he babbles, then he utters first simple words, after months he makes simple sentences without grammatical rules. He only learns those rules by repeated exposure to those speech sounds with rules and error correction for them. That is, he learns through a way of reinforcement and repetition. After years when he has become a fluent native speaker, he speaks grammatically perfect sentences without realizing what grammatical rules he has used on earth, he just pours them out spontaneously. This is quite a different result from the case of second language acquisition in which learners struggle to deal with those grammatical rules even when reaching an old age. As a result, learners of a second language tend to make much more speech errors than native speakers. And we are apt to presume that these errors mainly stem from the last 5 stages of Fromkin’s model, as there is no essential difference in the stage of identifying meaning comparing the two types of learning process.
ii. speech errors made unconsciously
We most people have the experiences that when we are speaking and talking, we often make speech errors. We even feel so astonished when our audiences directly point out those speech errors immediately after we made them that we just cannot believe what they state. We may strongly assert that we have indeed spoken what we intended to, however, it turned out that we failed, even if we could not remember at all. We can infer from these experiences that this type of speech errors probably occur at the sixth stage or at the level of articulating and the process of planning speech can be parallel with and totally independent of the process of articulation. However, the above mentioned occasion may hardly be confronted if there are processes of editing and self-monitoring, which would take longer time for the speaker to implement.
iii. Fluentness of uttering languages
Regarding the eight types of speech errors proposed by some scholars including Fromkin, I suggest all of these types are closely related with how fluently the speaker could speak that used language. The more fluently the speaker speaks, the more inclined the speech errors would be committed. We can infer this from the experiences that we would pay more attention to or arrange more capacity of working memory for the processing of the last five stages when we are not so familiar with the language being used. That is to say, in this situation, we tend to spend more time on editing and self-monitoring. In this way, if we can’t retrieve the right item from our internal lexicon, we may search for another item from a semantic aspect to replace the desired one. This is much a different case with that of the fluent speaker. A fluent speaker occupies much less capacity of working memory to deposit the words retrieved from internal lexicon. He just speaks in a spontaneous and automatic way to retrieve words and produce utterances without thinking too much. In this way, when the items he tries to utter have some properties inclined for him to confused in a phonetic way, he would then probably substitute a phonetically similar but wrong one for the right one , which results in various kinds of speech errors. Due to his large internal lexicon and quick retrieval, he substitutes totally in an unconscious way, which makes him more easy and inclined to substitute. iv. Tongue twister and singing songs
Considering the matter of tongue twister, you would find you can easily understand the meaning of the content of a twister when you read silently. However, you would also find it is hard to utter the sentences of it without speech errors. It is because you’re so unfamiliar with the articulation for sentences in which words are organized in a way hard for you to pronounce correctly. Your organs for articulation are struggling a lot. But after you practice a lot, you finally would overcome that obstacle, and becoming fluently in reading that twister aloud. From this twister example I would presume that the first stage of Fromkin’s model seems to be independent of the other five stages. Considering another case, singing songs, before we become familiar with the lyric of a song, we may sing out a wrong one. After we practice it a lot and have already remembered it, we often find we can sing the lyric out without consciously retrieving it. Sometimes only after we sing the lyric out do we start to think about the meaning of the lyric.
作者简介：李阅，硕士在读： 电子科技大学外国语学院外国语言学与应用语言学专业2010级 ，研究方向：应用语言学 跨文化交际。