Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sdchema.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn From: donn@sdchema.UUCP Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: 'Verbal shortmouth' Message-ID: <973@sdchema.UUCP> Date: Thu, 1-Dec-83 22:41:30 EST Article-I.D.: sdchema.973 Posted: Thu Dec 1 22:41:30 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 4-Dec-83 08:03:40 EST References: <473@dciem.UUCP> <4073@uiucdcs.UUCP> <4189@uiucdcs.UUCP> Organization: UC San Diego Chemistry Dept. NIH Research Resource Lines: 50 Joe Stemberger was a good friend of mine while we were both graduate students at UCSD Linguistics. He got his PhD and has become published and respected while I settled for a Master's and have remained comfortably obscure... But we still keep in touch and when I saw Rick Dinitz's article I forwarded it to him and asked if he had anything that might be interesting to the net (and might raise the quality of the discussion at least slightly). Here is his response: I have received one forwarded message from the discussion about speech errors and a few second-hand comments on the discussion. Here's some input based on this somewhat scanty information. I am the person mentioned in Rick Dinitz's message of a few days ago. My name is Joe Stemberger, in the psych department at C-MU (stemberger%cmu-psy-a@cmu-cs-a), and I have done a lot of work on speech errors, including collecting 7100 of the things and doing my dissertation on them. I gather that there was a question about errors like IT'S A VAST CAR for VERY FAST CAR, where the two words VERY and FAST have been telescoped into a single form. These aren't all that common as far as errors go, but they are well known in the literature on speech errors. Vicky Fromkin (in her 1973 book on SPEECH ERRORS AS LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE) refers to them as "haplology errors" because the speaker drops one or more syllables in saying the words involved. Lecours and Lhermitte, in a discussion of similar errors in aphasia, use the more colorful term "telescopage errors". Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel calls them "sequential blends", because the two adjacent words have been blended into a single form. There is another type of error called a "blend" that involves the blending of two usually synonymous words, as in FLASTE, a blend of FLAVOR and TASTE. Stefanie shows that blends and sequential blends have a lot of the same characteristics. I have recently discovered that almost all known examples of sequential blends involve an adverb modifying an adjective or verb, an adjective modifying a noun, or two nouns either in a compound noun or in a coordinate noun phrase. I suspect that they result from a failure on the part of the speaker to create a position in the sentence for one of these modifiers or extra nouns. The word that is left without a position usually just doesn't show up at all, but occasionally it succeeds in partially getting produced by blending together with the word it modifies or with the other noun in the phrase. That, at any rate, is my current understanding of this type of error. If you have any other questions about speech errors, just ask. ---Joe Stemberger Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn