analysis of production errors, to demonstrate phenomena in diachronic language change
Sigmund Freud, Vienese psychoanalyst
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
“lapsus linguae” (slips of the tongue), “lapsus calami” (slips of the pen), or in general, “Fehleistung” (= faulty action, “parapraxis”, “Freudian slip”)
repressed emotions cause errors (id over ego)
Freudian Slips: Examples
President of the Austrian Parliament says: “I take notice that a full quorum of members is present and herewith declare the sitting closed!”
Hotel boy knocks at bishop’s door, bishop says “Who is it?” and boy nervously replies: “The Lord, my boy!”
Member of the House of Commons refers to another honorable member as “Central Hell” (rather than “Hull”)
Professor says: “In the case of the female genital, in spite of the tempting… I mean, the attempted…”
Lady of well-determined character says: “My husband asked his doctor what sort of diet ought to be provided for him. But the doctor said he needed no special diet, he could eat and drink whatever I choose.”
Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775)
using words “mal à propos” (= out of place)
“She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the nile.” (alligator)
“Comparisons are odorous.” (odious)
“He is the very pineapple of politeness.” (pinnacle)
“I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they’re well-paid, well-trained, well equipped” (comensurate)
“Even Napoleon had his Watergate!” (Nixon or Waterloo)
Code-switches & borrowings speech errors
“Llegó el big chief.”
“Estaba training para pelear.”
“Vivo en ese building, el del rufo verde.”
“¿Vamos a lonchar?”
“Está flipando.”
“Quiere correr para mayor.”
“Se manchó la carpeta.”
Spoonerisms speech errors
Reverend Spooner, 19th Cent Oxford professor
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes!” (drink… working)
“… queer old dean…” (dear old queen, i.e., Queen Victoria)
“… noble tons of soil…” (sons of toil)
“You have tasted the whole worm.” (wasted… term)
“I have in my bosom a half-warmed fish” (half-formed wish)
Why do People’s Tongues Slip?
Freud:
slips of the tongue, and other such phenomena: caused by repressed emotions
More modern approaches:
things go wrong at one or another phase as the representation is built, during language production
Collecting Data on Speech Errors
Corpora, built up by annotated observed errors
even you can do this: write down what the speaker said and as much context as possible, as well as what the speaker meant to say
(Intended: You have a lot of ministers in our church.)
And Yet More Examples
Esas bocas no han salido de mi palabra.
(Intended: Esas palabras no han salido de mi boca.)
No quiero que crea.
(Intended: No creo que quiera.)
Las manecillas sin reloj…
(Intended: El reloj sin manecillas.)
Stress (and Sentence-Level Prosody)
Sentence-level stress is applied based on the structure of the clause (it’s not just something associated with a particular lexical item), so… stress won’t move with lexical exchange error:
When the PAPER hits the story…
Intended: When the STORY hits the paper…
(Never: When the paper hits the STORY…)
Stop beating your BRICK against a head wall
Intended: Stop beating your HEAD against a brick wall
(Never: Stop beating your brick against a HEAD wall)
Speech Errors: Constrained
Errors never generate impossible forms or ungrammatical sentences
Phonotactic constraints are always obeyed
Syntactic constraints are never violated / syntactic structure is never misconfigured
Errors typically involve similar elements (same lexical category, same segmental category)
Errors usually occur within a clause
Errors offer interesting data regarding the steps (“modules”) involved in planning speech
“Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace.” (GWB, Washington, DC, July 25, 2003)
“The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production.” (GWB, Washington, DC, November 27, 2002)
Source: The Complete Bushisms, Jacob Weisberg, http://slate.msn.com/id/76886/
Among the Many Words You Know…
How do you go about selecting the ones you wind up using in your sentences?
How is a lexical item retrieved?
FORM & MEANING… and FREQUENCY
SPEAKER v. HEARER
speaker uses meaning to retrieve words, but does form ever help choose?
uses form to retrieve words, but does meaning ever bias?
How is the Lexicon Organized?
Frequency
Meaning: close meaning associates to a word are stored nearby
I hate… uh, I meant LOVE… dancing with you!
I just feel like whipped cream and mushrooms
(strawberries)
All I want is something for my shoulders
(elbows)
Sound / Form: words with similar form are also stored nearby
If you can find a gargle around the house…
(garlic)
How is the Lexicon Organized? In addition to frequency…
…this restaurant hasn’t been awake very long
(open)
Put the oven on at a very low speed.
(temperature)
The picture of the whale from Jaws…
(shark)
Don’t forget to wash your head tonight.
(hair)
You’ll earn her eternal grapefruit.
(gratitude)
I give you my undevoted attention.
(undivided)
How is the Lexicon Organized? Evidence: TOT States
TOT: Tip of the Tongue
You know the word you need, but you can’t quite get it…
Su rendimiento en esta prueba no está asociada con...
Es el que más pinto… más pinta de chino tiene.
Lleva once años casados con…
A tan sólo unos centenares de metro…
Igoa, J. M., García-Albea, J. E., & Sánchez-Casas, R. (1999). Gender-number dissociations in sentence production in Spanish. Rivista di Linguistica, 11.1, 163-196.
Agreement in Spanish
“person” and “number” in agreement relations between a verb and its subject
La niña ha comido pan.
Las niñas han comido pan.
“gender” and “number” in agreement relations between a noun and (i) the constituents within the NP or (ii) an adjunct predicate of the NP
La profesora alemana
Las profesoras alemanas
El niño jugaba contento.
Los niños jugaban contentos.
Levels of Representation
morphological (inflectional suffixes):
-a (gender)
-s (number)
syntactic
gender/number marking of “agreeing” constituents
conceptual/semantic:
sex (gender)
numerosity / notional number (number)
A Difference in Representation
GENDER: can be determined by the semantics of words, or by their morphology
mujer / hombre
silla / zapato
it must be lexically specified (for nouns)!
it is arbitrary
NUMBER: not predictable from the semantics of phrases, or of words
Abunda el polvo en mi apartamento.
La policía llegó.
Todo el mundo es bueno.
it isn’t lexically specified!
A Typology for Spanish Gender
Elías-Cintrón (1994)
A Typology for Spanish Number
Gender & Number: Same Processing Loci?
Null hypothesis: retrieval and assignment of inflections is the same for all sorts of inflectional features
Dissociation hypothesis: gender features are retrieved and assigned from lemmas, while number features are independently assigned to lemmas and later to word forms through phrase structure building operations
Corpus Analysis Data
725 errors involving gender and number (from Corpus of Spanish Slips of the Tongue, Del Viso et al., 1987)
SUBSTITUTIONS
EXCHANGES
MOVEMENT ERRORS WITH “STRANDING”
NONCONTEXTUAL ERRORS
Substitutions
Gender
Feminine for masculine
Su rendimiento en esta prueba no está asociada con…
Masculine for feminine
Es el que más pinto de chino tiene
Number
Plural for singular
Lleva once años casados con…
Singular for plural
A tan sólo unos centenares de metro…
Exchanges
Gender
He cantado líneo y binga. (línea y bingo)
Number
Y pagamos a media las cuotas. (a medias la cuota)
Movement Errors with Stranding
Gender
Una cuera de suelo (Una suela de cuero)
Number
Esas bocas no han salido de mi palabra. (Esas palabras no han salido de mi boca.)
Noncontextual Errors
Form-based word substitutions
Hay dos apóstoles. (epístolas)
Meaning-based word substitutions
Toma sólo tres tenedores. (cucharadas)
Context-based word substitutions
El estómago de las uñas. (rumiantes)
Word blends
Hubo un confrontamiento. (confrontación/enfrentamiento)
Corpus Analysis: Results
Corpus Analysis: Results
Elicited Production Experiment
To induce stranding of gender / number inflections
