Slips of the Tongue - A Classification

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Slips of the tongue, language: English, abstract: Whenever people fail to utter the message they wanted to convey correctly, they apologize
and tend to explain their accidental mistake as a slip of the tongue. However, what is meant
and covered by this term which is used so often to refer to speech errors? Does its universality
suggest that all tongue slips are of the same kind? If not, how can they be distinguished?
This term paper will try to give a more detailed categorization of speech anomalies, first
providing a definition what is generally seen as a slip of the tongue. It will be shown, who
were the first linguists to examine this topic and what discoveries were made.
In order to give an own precise classification of speech errors, different approaches for
main categorizations will be presented and taken into consideration. On the basis of these
main categories, further sub-categories are elaborated and illustrated with examples given by
different authors in order to explain every feature appropriately. Since many authors still not
agree upon a common sub-classification, this term paper will select the most suitable terms
and definitions, try to compromise about the most common ones and give suggestions for
further distinctions. To be conforming to the majority of the literature, the most common
terminology shall be used. However, if provided terms are inappropriate or imprecise, they
will be modified.
The types of speech errors will be ordered via the main class they belong to. They will be
presented as sub-classes, defined, explained and illustrated by examples in detail. Examples
are marked with ordinals. The incorrect utterance is always presented with an asterisk and
followed by the proper realization in brackets. The pronunciation of the slips is written in
graphemes, i.e. normally w