Linguistic slip of the tongue theories

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Slips of the tongue are involuntary linguistic errors that occur when speaking and cannot be traced back to organic or other health causes,

Slips of the tongue have been (as well as "readers") since 1895, when the investigation made promises and readings. A psychological-linguistic study by Rudolf Meringer and Karl Mayer appeared, repeatedly the subject of linguistic studies and collections. These are phenomena for which errors in speech production (speaking, signing, writing, typing) are held responsible and which are particularly noticeable as anticipatoryor repetitive serialization errors - omission, insertion (intrusion, addition), replacement (the substitution; with the special form of the exchange of metathesis; permutation or reversal etc.) - or as word and phrase substitution as a whole or partial, then referred to as contamination (actually "pollution"; this is the case with word and phrase substitution by almost synonymous or also antonymous words or phrases), basically as promise units of speech gestures (related to the point of articulation, e.g. B. metathetically the bilabial gesture alone versus the dorsovelar gesture alone, e.g. without associated nasalization), of sounds and groups of sounds, morphemes, whole or only parts of words (as well as of phrase syntagms ). Often slip of the tongue is corrected immediately, often unnoticed. Often they go unnoticed and the speaker claims to have uttered what he intended to say. According to Busch-Lauer, a slip of the tongue can be expected for around 1000 words. Interrogation and reading are not part of speech production, but speech perception.

Slips of the tongue (Lapsus linguae) are always involuntary. They are to be distinguished from "intentional slip of the tongue", which may have the same forms, but - for example in cabaret sketches - cannot be traced back to language planning and execution errors and which are used as allusion, irony, satire or pun and pun. should exercise a special communicative function.

Some researchers assume a special form of slip of the tongue if this gives the impression that the linguistic error betrays the secretive thinking of the speaker; such apparently “treacherous” slip of the tongue are called Freudian slip of the tongue. Helen Leuninger (1993: 113ff) takes the view (among other authors) that there is no need for such a special category, since these slip of the tongue are also the result of mistakes in language planning (other authors: also language execution) and they are merely more about the “would-be voyeur , namely, betrayed the listener “as the interpreter than through the speaker. According to Nora Wiedenmann (passim), so-called Freudian mistakes can be found under all slip of the tongue, according to structure and promised utterance. According to Wiedenmann (passim), the designation failure in the Freudian sense should generally not be extended to slip of the tongue ( speech errors ).

A distinction must be made between speech and language disorders that can be traced back to brain damage caused by stroke, trauma, tumor and other causes. In such cases it is, among other things, aphasia .

Slip from a linguistic point of view

When researching the slip of the tongue, the linguists, psycholinguists and psychologists are interested on the one hand in the classification of the phenomena and, on the other hand, especially in the question of how the very different manifestations of the slip of the tongue can be causally explained.

Frankfurt linguist Helen Leuninger explained with a view to Meringer's early research:

"With his analysis he wanted to find answers to the questions which psychological mechanisms lead to linguistic mistakes, which linguistic units can be captured by these mechanisms and which psychological-linguistic structure the slip of the tongue has."

The procedure for more recent attempts at explanation is that a language planning model is designed and then an attempt is made to assign the slip of the tongue to the language planning levels [as a model]. Leuninger (1996: 140) distinguishes between the following phases of language planning: First comes the message that is to be communicated to another person. This message has to be implemented by the speaker's production system and runs through the following levels (simplified; hypothetical): a predicative level on which the meaning is planned; a positional level at which the grammatical form is developed; a lexical and grammatical control [apparently] takes place, then the articulation program with an [apparent] sound control, which finally brings the grammatically structured form into an appropriate sound form, the linguistic utterance. The slip of the tongue can now be assigned to these levels of language planning.

Slips of the tongue can only take place within a very narrow time frame, since they are probably caused by errors in the speaker's [hypothetical] working memory, the scope of which seems to be in the time range for approx. 7 syllables (ie speaker-related).

Types of slip of the tongue (all from Leuninger 1993 and 1998, according to a categorization made differently by other scientists; see Wiedenmann 1998) u. a .:

1. Substitutions: Substitutions based on the similarity of meaning or form. When replacing a form-like word, strict rules are followed; so the wrong word usually has the same number of syllables, the same or identically felt endings and initial sounds etc. as the word that should actually be uttered. Example: "renowned" instead of "renovated" (88). Apparently no new word is created, but one is replaced by the other due to the similarity of form.

2. Interchanges, which usually occur within the same part of speech for words. Words, parts of compound words, syllables or even sounds change their place. Example [originally from Rudolf Meringer's Corpora: 1895/1908]: “practical prack” instead of “practical purpose” (83).

3. In the case of anticipations (anticipations), linguistic units are anticipated in an utterance. These units can be the units mentioned above: words, word components, phonetic groups / sounds; Example: "I wanted to st o pursue ckbrieflich leave": the "o" in "track" (here a substitutive example) preferred in the temporal serialization (84).

4. Postpositions (echoes, repetitions; also referred to by the term perseveration, which comes from pathology) are the counterpart to anticipations. Here linguistic elements linger, which means that a unit that has already been uttered is still active in language planning and for this reason is mistakenly used a second time (substitute or additive). All units already mentioned can be affected by this; Example: “socialist sects” for “socialist sects” (Leuninger 1996: 73).

5. Contamination of Syntagms or Words. They are considered to be the most exciting slip of the tongue and occur (speaker-related; promise is idiosyncratic ) relatively often. Here, two competing elements are mixed up, with relevant parts of both expressions being joined together. An example of a contamination of words is: "Hint point" for "hint / clue" (98).

An example of the assignment of a slip of the tongue to one of the language planning levels: Leuninger (1993: 164) interprets the slip of the tongue “I can't jump over my skin” as a contamination of the phrases “I can't jump over my shadow” and “I can't get out of mine Skin ”and assigns it to the predicative level, that is, the level of language planning on which the meaning of an utterance is planned.

Leuninger also points out that when children grow up bilingual, the interaction of both languages ​​can lead to slips of the tongue. Here a field is touched that is also treated under the term error linguistics .

Prescribing, interrogating, reading out

It should also be noted that mistakes do not only occur when speaking; rather, there are language planning errors in another important area of ​​language production as well, namely writing. H. Typos or typos.

But also with perception (which is to be separated from speech production, but is temporally entangled with it: as [visual and auditory] reafferences and also as afferents from the speaker's environment [see Meringer's references (passim) to the “speech of the Others "]) linguistic utterances, while listening and reading, errors occur for which disturbed processes are responsible. [To be dealt with in a separate chapter, since it does not belong to errors in speech production:] Goethe said about hearing errors: “But the listener and his ear also contribute to errors that are thought. Nobody hears what he knows, nobody hears what he can feel, imagine and think. ”In this short text, Goethe also gives a small list of hearing and writing errors.

Freud also draws attention to such types of errors. He does not mention hearing defects in the index of his psychopathology , but he does - alongside promises (examples taken from the corpus of the contemporary linguist Rudolf Meringer, namely in 1901 from Freud's first publication on the psychopathology of everyday life (forgetting, promising, grasping) along with remarks about a root of superstition . In: monthly magazine for Psychiatry and Neurology, Vol X, the first book, 1-13) - Proclamation, prescribe and misprinting with many text references....

In his book on the so-called Freudian mistake, Timpanaro convincingly shows that the slip of the tongue , which Sigmund Freud made in his work On Psychopathology of Everyday Life following Rudolf Meringer , mostly by adopting Meringer's already causally declared slip of the tongue (see Minger's violent protests against it in 1930s), compiled and interpreted psychoanalytically, can also be explained by the typical errors that occur again and again in the handwritten tradition of ancient texts during the copying process.

About the terminology

While today obviously slip of the tongue as a term over blunder (in the latter is not yet clear whether it is spoken language - promises in terms of Sichversprechen - or squandering , Vergebärden etc.) and also to speech errors (within the meaning of stuttering, Stumbling, sigmatism etc.), the conceivable analog terminological formations for errors in writing / typing (for listening and reading, see language perception!) Do not seem to be generally common. They do exist, however, like the titles of the articles (in non-scientific form) Ariadne auf Nixon. Scattered interrogators, slip of the tongue, readers, mix-ups and God's son Obi laughs. Show slip of the tongue, interrogator . Even printers (= incorrectly set word; meaning: misprints; earlier the typesetter, today as typing and editing errors in the production of printed texts) already exist - as expected - of which one can easily convince oneself with Internet search engines, even if the term does not appear to have been included in the dictionaries.

See also

literature

  • Siglinde Eberhart: slip of the tongue . In: Gert Ueding (ed.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Darmstadt: WBG 1992ff., Vol. 10 (2011), Col. 1411-1417.
  • Jörg Keller, Helen Leuninger: Grammatical Structures - Cognitive Processes. A work book. Narr, Tübingen 1993. Speech production: pp. 208-219. ISBN 3-8233-4954-6 .
  • Helen Leuninger: Talking is silence, silver is gold. Collected slip of the tongue. 2nd Edition. Ammann, Zurich 1993. ISBN 3-250-10209-1 .
  • Helen Leuninger: Thanks and goodbye for taking away. Collected slip of the tongue and a little theory of their corrections. Ammann, Zurich 1996. ISBN 3-250-10323-3 (both books by Leuninger also contain a linguistic theory of the slip of the tongue based on a language planning model she designed).
  • Rudolf Meringer, Karl Mayer: Promises and reading out. A psychological-linguistic study. Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1895. (Reprint: A. Cutler, D. Fay (eds.): Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science II: Classics in Psycholinguistics, Vol. 2. Benjamin, Amsterdam 1978).
  • Rudolf Meringer: From the life of language: promises, children's language, instinct for imitation. Festschrift of the kk Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz on the occasion of the annual celebration on 15th XI. 1906.Behr 's Verlag, Berlin 1908.
  • Sebastiano Timpanaro : Il lapsus freudiano: Psicanalisi e critica testuale. La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1974. English translation: The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism. Translated by Kate Soper. London, 1976.
  • Nora Wiedenmann: slip of the tongue and the attempts to explain it. A literature review. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 1992. ISBN 3-88476-054-8 .
  • Nora Wiedenmann: A Corpus of German Speech Errors. In: Research reports by the Institute for Phonetics and Linguistic Communication at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (FIPKM; University of Munich, FRG), 30 (1992), Supplement, pp. 1-77.
  • Nora Wiedenmann: slip of the tongue and consonant occurrence frequencies . Spoken language from slip of the tongue as opposed to written language from the KAEDING count [Speech Error Data and Consonant Frequencies (in German). Casual Speech of (German) Speech Error Corpora and the Written Language of the Kaeding Count]. In: Sprache & Sprachen, 22 (1998), 16–39. ISSN  0934-6813 .
  • Nora Wiedenmann: slip of the tongue. Phenomena and data [1–78; Bibliography on Promise and Related Phenomena: 79-110; Appendix: 1-265]. With materials on disk. Wissenschaftsverlag Edition Praesens, Vienna 1998. ISBN 3-901126-91-0 .
  • Nora Wiedenmann: slip of the tongue: dissimilation of consonants. Speech production under spatio-temporal aspect. In: Linguistic Works, 404, Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1999. ISBN 3-484-30404-9 , ISSN  0344-6727 .
  • Nora Wiedenmann: Promises - Prescribes - Mistakes: Error analysis. In: Sprache & Sprachen 27/28 (2002), pp. 82–107. ISSN  0934-6813 .
  • Nora Wiedenmann: Promise - or the loss of the genitive in German as a change in language? [Making Speech Errors - Or the Loss of the German Genitive-s As Beginning Language Change?]. In: Estudios Filológicos Alemanes, Revista del Grupo de Investigación Filología Alemana, Vol. 4, Editorial Kronos, Seville 2004. ISSN  1578-9438 .
  • Nora Wiedenmann: Thinking 'soap' but speaking “oaps”: The Sound Preparation Period: Backward Calculation From Utterance to Muscle Innervation. In: BRAI N. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, Vol. 1, Issue 2, EduSoft Publishing, Bacau 2010. ISSN  2067-3957 link .

Web links

Wiktionary: slip of the tongue  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Schade, Thomas Berg, Uwe Laubenstein: 23. Vers promise and their repairs , psycholinguistics, an international handbook, edited by Gert Rickheit, u. a., Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2003, pages 317–338, ISBN 978-3-11-011424-9
  2. ↑ Linguistic mistakes: slip of the tongue, interrogator, prescriber . In: Der Sprachdienst , Volume 56, Issue 3–4, 2012, page 133 [= report on a lecture by Ines Busch-Lauer on February 28, 2012 in Wiesbaden].
  3. ↑ Leuninger 1993: 118
  4. ↑ Leuninger 1993: 82
  5. ↑ Leuninger 1993: 129ff; Leuninger 1996: 139ff
  6. ↑ Leuninger 1993: 126f
  7. ↑ Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Hearing, writing and printing errors. In: Goethe's works . Edited on behalf of the Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxony. 41 vol., 1st division. Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1902, pp. 183–188; Quote: 184.
  8. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Psychopathology of everyday life . Fischer, Frankfurt 1992. ISBN 3-596-26079-5
  9. ↑ Eckhard Henscheid, Gerhard Henschel, Brigitte Kronauer: Cultural history of misunderstandings. Studies on Spiritual Life . Reclam, Leipzig 1997, pp. 464-468. ISBN 3-379-01689-6
  10. ↑ Burckhard Garbe: Goodbye Goethe. New glossaries for new German. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2007. ISBN 978-3-451-05828-8