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.

This book reports the results of an extensive study of slips of the tongue produced by foreign language (L2) learners at different levels of proficiency. Thus, it provides new data which can be used to test current monolingual models of speech production and to further the development of bilingual speech production models. Moreover, it offers a new approach to the study of second language acquisition. The book contains a detailed survey of the findings of L1 slip research, including studies of slips produced by child L1 learners. It systematically compares these findings to those of the current L2 study and relates them to recent monolingual and bilingual models of speech production and to several cognitive models of second language acquisition. Special features of the book are its emphasis on methodological problems and the inclusion of the complete L2 corpus of 2000 slips of the tongue. It is expected that the book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in the areas of speech production and second language acquisition, and particularly to those who would like to test their own hypotheses using the L2 data.Summary of the contents of the book. The book provides an overview of the key findings in L1 slip research. It relates L1 findings to monolingual speech production models. It gives a detailed survey of studies of slips produced by children. It presents an up-to-date review of bilingual speech production models. It discusses recent cognitive models of second language acquisition. It gives a detailed description of an extensive research project on slips of the tongue produced by Dutch learners of English. The L2 slip corpus is tape-recorded. It discusses methodological problems in L1 slip research. It systematically compares the L1 findings to those of the L2 slip project. It relates the findings to monolingual and bilingual models of speech production and to cognitive models of second language acquisition. It makes the data available in the appendix.

Spontaneous speech errors provide valuable evidence not only for the processes that mediate between a communicative intention and the articulation of an utterance but also for the types of grammatical entities that are manipulated during production. This study proposes an analysis of speech errors that is informed by grammar theory. In particular, it is shown how characteristic properties of erroneous German utterances can be accounted for within Distributed Morphology (DM). The investigation focuses on two groups of errors: Errors that result from the manipulation of semantic and morphosyntactic features, and errors which appear to involve the application of a post-error repair strategy. It is argued that a production model which incorporates DM allows for a straightforward account of the attested, sometimes complex, error patterns. DM mechanisms, for instance, render unnecessary the assumption of repair processes. Besides providing an account for the attested error patterns, the theory also helps us in explaining why certain errors do not occur. In this sense, DM makes for a psychologically real model of grammar.

Including contributions from a team of world-renowned international scholars, this volume is a state-of-the-art survey of second language speech research, showcasing new empirical studies alongside critical reviews of existing influential speech learning models. It presents a revised version of Flege's Speech Learning Model (SLM-r) for the first time, an update on a cornerstone of second language research. Chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: theoretical progress, segmental acquisition, acquiring suprasegmental features, accentedness and acoustic features, and cognitive and psychological variables. Every chapter provides new empirical evidence, offering new insights as well as challenges on aspects of the second language speech acquisition process. Comprehensive in its coverage, this book summarises the state of current research in second language phonology, and aims to shape and inspire future research in the field. It is an essential resource for academic researchers and students of second language acquisition, applied linguistics and phonetics and phonology.