To what Extent do Speech Errors serve as Linguistic Evidence?

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,3, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: Theories about speech production and its underlying rules are of increasing interest for linguistic research and have been for many years already. Errors of speech play an important role in these theories, as do errors in reading and writing. Although latter error types deliver further evidence supporting the ideas presented in this paper, the considerations gathered will, in default of space, be restricted to slips of the tongue. This error type is by Boomer s and Laver s definition: an involuntary deviation in performance from the speaker s current phonological, grammatical or lexical intention. Further distinctions will be made in respective chapters of this paper. Each error type will be illustrated by examples found in the appendixes of Fromkin s Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence (1973) and Cutler s Slips of the Tongue and Language Production (1982). All of the presented examples will be indented and made up in the same way: the intended sentence, phrase or word is to be found on the left, the erroneous output follows after a symbol. Where it is possible, personal observations and own examples are added.