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Slips in the Limelight

Chapter 8 highlights interesting facts and implications of different kinds of slips. For the first time I hear about "slips of action," although I experienced them a couple of times. Most interesting is that slips of the tongue are not merely language errors. We can call them "valuable revelations" and insights that tell us more about how our cognitive system breaks down language into smaller linguistic units. Additionally, they help predict children's progress in the course of language acquisition and even reflect on their personalities and creativity (chapter 9).

As we have slips of the action, slips of the ear, slips of the keyboard, and even slips of the hand (for sign language), and given that even children can correct themselves, why is it that we tend to be more critical to slips of the tongue?

Another question:
Erard mentions that we don't hear some slips or tend to hear the common errors. Based on this assumption, to what extent the conducted research is objective? And how can we succeed in collecting a tangible, reliable corpus?

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 14, 2008 4:42 AM.

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