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1984

The Theory and Practice of Misspelling : A Linguistic Analysis

Judy Frasch Worman

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Recommended Citation Worman, Judy Frasch, "The Theory and Practice of Misspelling : A Linguistic Analysis" (1984). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4246. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/4246

This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MISSPELLING:

A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

By

JUDY FRASCH WORMAN

A thesis submi tted in partial fulfillment of the requi rements for the degree Master of Arts Maj or in En gl ish South Dakota State University 1984 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MISSPELLING:

A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

This thesis is approved as a creditable and independent investigation by a candidate for the degree, Master of Arts, and is acceptable for meeting the thesis requirements for this degree.

Acceptance of this thesis does not imply that the conclusions reached by the candidate are necessarily the conclusions of the major department.

�hn Taylor Oate hesis Adviser

Paul Wither1ngton Date Major Adviser

Ruth Alexander 'D� Head, English Department ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis is dedicated to those who were instrumental in helping me achieve another goal in life:

My thesis adviser, Dr. John Taylor, who taught me Linguistics, guided my progress carefully, and inspired me with self-confidence.

My husband, Jim, who lovingly chided me: "You will do it, and you wi 11 1 � ke ; t!"

My four sons, John, Joe, Jeff, and Jim, who humorously questioned: 11You•re getting your what degree?"

My mother, Margaret Frasch, who remains forever amazed at her daughter's academic achievements.

My mother- and father-in:..law, Helen and Alfred, who steadfastly maintained: "You•1 1 get your degree; it's just a matter of time ...

My son• s fiance, Susan Roberts, who encouraged me by remarking: "You, too, will get there from here!"

Last but not least, Jinx, my all-American, who provided companionship during those long walks together.

JFW TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1 - ANTICIPATION AND PERSEVERATION . 10

CHAPTER 2 - METATHESIS . 23

CHAPTER 3 - BLENDS • . . 38

CHAPTER 4 - TIP OF THE TONGUE. . 52

CHAPTER 5 - MALAPROPISMS • 69

CHAPTER 6 - CONVERGENCE. . 85

CONCLUSION . • 107

GLOSSARY . • . 114

WORKS CITED. 121 1

INTRODUCT ION

Background

I have always enjoyed a healthy interest in words, their etymologiess and spellings as far back as the seventh grade when I entered and was fifth runner-up in the Lehigh Val ley Spelling Bee as a representative from Our Lady Help of Christians School in Al l entown ,

Pennsylvania. I was always fascinated with-words, and was continual ly pul ling ·out the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in order to look up the etymologies and meanings of certain words that I had heard on tel e­ vi sion or seen in print. "Li nguisti cs" was a word unfamiliar to me. until col l ege when I enrol led in my fi rst course. It was there that I discovered ·that phono 1 ogy, morpho 1 ogy , syntax, and semantics , which · had always hel d my interest but had remained nameless, final ly became grouped under one heading.

Sister Mercedess one of my high school Engl ish teachers , never called what she wa s teaching 11 L ingui sti cs" ; she merely taught her ninth graders which phonetic sounds represent which · letter(s) of the a 1 phabet, stressed the use of a dictionary /thesaurus to enhance our word power, and attempted to illustrate how etymology can be a good guide to remembering the spelling of certain .. foreign" or "polysyl­ labic.. words. As I think back now , she always approached teaching optimi stical ly (and prescri ptively) , and one of her positive state­ ments with which she impressed her students concerning the necessity of cogent writing (and which she had us commi t to memory) is the Latin 2

proverb 11Verba volent, scri pta manent, 11 or 11The spoken wo rd fl ies away, the written wo rd remains... I found my self unconsciously impres­ sing this upon my Freshman Composition students duri ng the semesters I taught witho ut connecting that fact unti l now .

As a gra duate teaching assi stant instructing a freshman writing course , I found teaching both rewarding and challenging. The satisfacti on that I derived from helping students improve thei r writing skills is immeasurable. Moreover, I found grading themes quite a learning experience. It taught me not to look solely at errors in . granmar and syntax as mere .. dumb11 . mi stakes which were written by students with below-average intel ligence out of careless­

ness or haste, a 1 though there were those kinds as we 11 . On the contra ry, it chall enged me to use all my resources to inspect errors analytically and more critically in an attempt to discover why and how they were made. My curiosity was a roused because I sensed a much deeper source to the spelling problem than just ordinary carelessness or stupidity. I began wondering about the workings of the students • minds as they 11invented" new words and "created .. innova tive spel lings , and thus, an idea for a master•s thesis was born .

Methodo logy

The freshmen at South Dakota State Uni versi ty are primari ly students who have 1 i ved thei r entire 1 i ves in sma11 agri cul tura 1 conmunities. They are nei ther stupid nor unintel ligent but merely inexperienced in writing fo rmal exposition. Many of them come from 3

towns wi th populati ons under one-thousand and high schoo1 graduating classes of twenty-five to fifty. Thei r pri mary means of communi cation

( up until they enrolled in col l ege) wa s through speech. Because they rarely wri te, they feel very uncomfortable about learning to wri te effectively. For the most part, these inexperi enced wri ters are bright but unable to express themselves orthographically. There were some who , in spite of their limited lingui sti c knowledge, excel led fa r beyond what would normally be expected of them. The majority, though, were inexperienced writers who wrote as they spoke because they were simply unaware of those basic differences which separate speech from wri ting. These were the students from whom I co 11 ected mi sspe11 ed words to be used ul timately as data fo r my thesis.

I col l ected and typed on individual index cards over fi ve­ hundred errors from whi ch I sel ected representative samples based on

Chomsky's "clear case princi ple . .. These unusual spellings and hyper­ corrections are attempts by conscientious students to master the

1 anguage in wri tten fonn. Furthennore , in an attempt to wri te mo re

"educated" words, the inexperienced wri ter goes beyond correctness and produces an "innovati ve�· word or phrase. Noam Chomsky , in his book entitl ed Syntactic Structures , defines what he means by the "cl ear case principle" :

The fundamental aim in linguisti c analysis of a language L

is to separate the 'grammatical ' sequences which are sen­

tences of L from the 'ungrammati cal ' sequences which are not 4

sentences of L and to study the structure of the grammati cal

sequences. The grammar of L will thus be a device that

generates all of the grammati cal sequences of L and none of

the ungrammati ca 1 ones.. . • The graOITlar is set up in the

simpl est way so that it includes the clear sentences and

excl udes the clear non-sentences •..• A certain number of

clear cases , then, wi ll provide us with a criteri on of

adequacy for any parti cular grammar. (13-14)

I selected only those errors from freshmen who were native Ameri cans, excl uding the errors of any�fo reign students I had in classes. These particular student errors were col l ected during the 1981 -82 , as well as the 1983-84 , academic year. I chose only the 11Clear case11 errors that directly demonstra te the theory of erro r analysis I wi sh to develop. The othe r unused errors from each catego ry are listed in the

Appendix at the end of each chapter.

Not only did I choose the 11Clear cases .. that exhibit clear

syntax, but I also chose examples that exhibit clear semantics. This

is known as the .. construal pri nci ple... Just as Chomsky bel i eves that

the gramma r under analysis shoul d be 11Sentences11 and not .. non­

sentences,.. Fi 11mor e goes one step further and states that not only

should the examples under analysis be grammati cal ly 11Clear11 sentences,

but also semantically 11Clear11 as wel l. In his article entitled 110n

Generati vity11 in the book by the title, Goa ls of Linguistic Theory,

Fi llmore explains what he means by the .. construal pri nci ple11 : 5

Figurative speech [is a string of words] where what is of

interest is the structural type which the speaker/ [wri ter]

wants the hearer/ [readerl to perceive as a framework upon

which the hearer•s; [reader•s] •construing• abiliti es can

impose some sort of i nterpretation-...ho pefully the intended

. interpretation .• .. Somebody whose lexi con contains only the literal interpretation of the noun [bitch] but who is

observed to use it neverthe 1 ess when referring to human

beings has made a creati ve extension of the scope of the

word tha t is accounted for by reference to the knowl edge

that participants in our civilization use attri butions to

human beings of nonhuman anima 1 P.roperti es for pej oration ; somebo dy who does not use the word when referri ng to female

dogs 1 acks the ori gina 1 sense and has a 1 exi ca 1 entry for

bitch with the pejorati ve sense bui lt in rather than

acquired by a construal principle. (8 and 11)

These two criteria, namely, . grammar and meaning, were essential elements when I chose representative samples. With these two key factors in mind, I want to present a bri ef ove rview of my erro r­ analysis categories.

Overv iew

The errors that I analyzed compri se five separate categori es : anti cipation/perseverati on , metathesis, blends, tip of the tongue, and malapropisms . I decided on these five areas because I fel t that these 6

were the "interesting" and 11i ntelligent" erro rs which wou ld warrant my

close analysis and inspection, and in so do ing, allow me to delve

deeper into the wo rkings of the · mi nd in terms of how mo rphology ,

phonology , semantics, and syntax play an important role in "justi fy­

ing" them. A sixth chapter deals with·" convergence" and ma kes use of

a number -of different kinds of errors to illustra te a specific point.

Each type of error was analyzed thoroughly by my looking at syl labifi­

cation, phonetic simi l ari ty, sentential stres s, feature simila ri ty,

syntax , semantics, and morphology . Only by exami ning all these areas

can one arr-i ve at any kind __ of meaningful and benefi cial concl usions

regarding the evolution of error.

The fi rst category of erro rs is anti ci pation which deals wi th

a sound or phoneme ·which appears erroneously in a word as a resul t of

the infl uence of the same sound or phoneme occurri ng in the word(s·)

followi ng the error. An example of this type of error is rad appl e

instead of red appl e where the !_ of appl e is anticipated, and pre­

maturely appears in the adjective red as wel l as the noun in which it

· is found. Perseverati on , the opposite of anticipation, deals wi th a

sound or phoneme which appears erroneously in a word as a resul t of

the infl uence of the same sound or phoneme occurring in the word(s)

preceding the error. An example to illustrate thi s po.i nt is the

phrase bl ue bloxes instead of the intended blue boxes . The 1 of blue

is perseve rated or carried over into the fol lowing word boxes.

Metathesis is the second category from which I selected

errors. It deals with the transpos.ition of letters wi thin words as a 7

result of some simi larity in sound , stress, and structure which are found in other wo rds wi thin the sentence . An example to illustrate this type of erro r is the wo rd parnets instead of parents.

Next are the blends which consist of the combining of two wo rds so that portions of both words are el imi nated and po rtions of both are retained which blend together to produce a "new" word. An example of this type of erro r is the "invention" of the word prej udism as a result of the bl ending of the two words, prejudice and raci sm .

It should be noted that the ice of prejudi ce and the rae of raci sm are di scarded ..

Tip of the tongue (TOT), the fourth category, deals with those words which cannot be immediately recal led, and therefore , what results are wo rds whi ch approximate the intended ones in certain ways , namely, number of syl lables , stress pattern , and identical initial and final letters . An example of thi s phenomenon is the TOT word predesaned for the intended word predesti ned.

The fifth category of errors is known as malapropisms which are wo rds that resemble the intended ones in sound, stress, syl lable structure , and similar initial and fi nal letters , but have very different (and sometimes humo rous) meanings to the intended words . An example from this category is the word inhibited which is used instead of the intended one inh�bi ted.

The last category deal s with various kinds of egregious errors in order to demonstrate the "convergence principle.. whi ch; simply defined, · means that students who tend to ma ke errors consistently 8

throughout their themes suffer from what is known as a .. converging" effect, that is, their errors multiply toward the ends of sentences� paragraphs, and themes because these students become either physical ly or mentally ti red and/or lose motivation . An example to illustrate

this effect is the fo llowing excerpt: Monday I work on my Research pape r all . day a most of that night. I wanted to get done because I wanted to leave early for Thanksgiving. But once it was done I fealt geart. There are many kinds of errors in this excerpt which point to

physical and mental fatigue as a resul t of writing a research paper

continuously for one day and a good deal of the night.

This is a general overview of the kinds of errors that I wi ll

analyze in the fol lowing chapters . I fi nd these errors fascinating to

examine because they lead to insights into the worl d of phonology , morphology, semanti.cs, syntax, and lexicon . These areas linguisti cal­

ly intertwine during the course of the encoding process, and because

they · intertwi ne, the students produce .. innovati ve .. and 11Creati ve"

·addi tions to the Engl ish 1 anguage . Mo reover, in analyzing them, one

moves a little closer to understanding how the mi nd operates and how

ingenious and complex human language really is. To 1l l ustrate vivi dly the kind of inexperi enced wri ters I dealt with in the course of teaching, I am remi nded of one student in

pa rti cu1 a r who represents a typi ca 1 rna 1 e student who enro 11s in a Midwestern state college in South Dakota . Eldon usually came to class except during Hobo Week festivi ties and the days precedi ng and fo llow­

ing .. long" weekends a·nd hol iday breaks. He shuffled into the 9

classroom wearing a bri ght green cap with the inscri ption

11Northrup/ Ki ng Seeds .. written in yel low letters across the front, a pair of cowhide boots , and a tee shirt boasti ng that .. Cowboys do it better... Eldon wrote exactly the way he spo ke and was not the 1 east bit intimi dated by all the red marks and comnents that were wri tten on his themes. He came from a small West Ri ver ranching conmuni ty where his father owned a consi derable acreage of land and a sizable number of cattle. It was obvious from the start that Eldon was enrol led in coll ege because his parents had insisted.

One day in class we_were discussing why a col l ege education is important and more particularly why it is necessary to learn how to write effectively (and to take Freshman Composition). After tal king a whi le, exchanging views with a number of students, and giving some pertinent exampl es to illustrate my poi nt, I noticed Eldon shaking his head negati vely from side to side and wearing a cynical smi le whi le at the same time moving a wad of Copenhagen from one · cheek to the other and spitting the excess sal iva into an empty Coke can. I asked him if he had something to contribute to the di scussion and he answered : .. I ain't never gonna have ta wri te nothin cuz my major is ageraculture and I'm fixin ta be around aminals all my life . Besides, I learned a lot of that English crap in high school and reckons I knows enough to git by ... Then the bell rang. I also shook my head from side to side,

smi led disbel ievingly, moved from one side of the desk to the other in order to col lect out-of-class themes, and wondered just what kinds of

.. interesting .. errors I was going to di scover in Eldon 's theme . 10

CHAPTER 1

ANTICIPATION AND PERSEVERATION

Anti ci pation is the type of spelling error that resul ts because the student 's brain thinks ahead of what that person actually wri tes. Cohen , in his arti cle entitled "Errors of Speech and Thei r

Implication fo r Understanding the Strategy of Language Users ," defines anticipation as fol lows : "Whenever the segment which is actually being produced clearl y refl ects the infl uence of a segment that should occur later .•." ( 89). For examp 1 e, in the sentence The two rnain gua 1 iti es of grade three thinkers , prej udi cy and hypocri sy, can be found in Hitler, the word prej udicy is spel led with a � because thi s student anticipates or- concentrates on the segment [y] at the end of the word hypocrisy. This type of error is not necessa ri ly the result of the student's inability to spell prejudice, but is the result of the slow motor operation of the hand and arm trying to maintain the same speed as this student's rapidly-thinking brain. When the mind continues to think ahead of what the hand can actually write , con­ fusion inadvertently occurs.

The fact that prej udice also has the /s/ sound as does the word hypocrisy makes it easier .fo r the student to analogize and add the [y] to the end of tha t wo rd. This inexperi enced wri ter is obviously aware of the parallelism that is stressed in gramnar, but goes beyond correctness at thi s point to hypercorrection. The phonetic similarity, along wi th the hypercorrection and the brain's 11

speed thinking, account fo r the error. It should be noted that both words /pr:Jadisi/ and /hap!krtsi/ are nouns and their syntax is that of appos itives in the sentence. The anticipation error occurs in the unstressed syl l ab 1 e and , as a result of the added [y], there is a secondary stress placed on the thi rd syl lable of the mi sspel led word .

When teache rs discover errors , they must look at all aspects of sentence construction, namely, the phonology, mo rphology, syntax , and semantics , in order to detennine why such erro rs are made. A 11 errors cannot be dismi ssed as mere stupidi ty on the student•s part, but can actually be 11i ntel ligent" errors that produce more infonnation

fo r researchers and teachers alike on how the mind operates during the encoding and wri ting process .

In anothe r ex amp 1 e, The 1 aser is more practi c 1 e than the particle beam at a surface base because the parti cl e beam is limi ted

to its angle of firing, where the laser isn•t, the word practicle has

the ending � instead of � in anticipation of the � ending of the / I wo rd pa rticle. /PrtlfktC\k)l/ and /part�k�l/ are simi lar in sound,

stress , a-nd s pe 11i ng. The vowe 1 �' pronounced /� I in pract i ca 1 and /a/ in parti cle, is the di fference that can be heard between these two

words or seen in their phonetic transcri ption. The a is also found in

the last syl lable of practical and not in the word particl e, but the

pro nunc i a ti on for both end syl lab 1 es is i dent i ca 1 because both are

unstressed and therefore phonetically receive the schwa /�/ . In thi s

anticipation error there is a substi tution of one endi ng le fo r the 12

correct one al . The bra in's gestalt formed much faster than the motor operation of thi s student's hand in an attempt to finish the sentence .

Some interferences operate in this sentence to confuse the student further. First, the erro r and another· word in the sentence are simi lar to each other in sound , stress, and spelling. Second, the wo rd particle plays an important ro le in the meaning of the sentence because it is compared to the laser and the word itself is repeated twice wi thin the sentence. This student's brain is fanning many gestalts during the writing process , namely, expressing a thought in words , deciding how the words should be placed syntacti cally in the sentence, choosing words that are semantically appropri ate, monitori ng the sentence for comp-1 eteness and accuracy , and sending impulses to the arm and -hand to transcribe the thought orthographi cally. With all these gestalts continually going on , it is easy to understand why an anti cipation error, such as the one noted above , occurs.

0. B. Fry , in an article entitled 11The Lingui stic Evidence of

Speech Errors , .. devises a particular schema for the encoding process which he bel i eves occurs in a person 's brain before it becomes speech.

The same process occurs for writing; the only diffe rence is the type of motor control , that is, the arm and hand muscles are used instead of the vocal cords , tongue, and mouth. Fry names the stages of the encoding process in the following manner: Semantic Encoding

Lexical Encoding

Morpheme Encoding 13

Phoneme Encoding

Motor Control (158)

Hi s series of gestalts is an ongoing one whi ch means that the wri ter's

brain does not finish the first gestalt (Semantic Encodi ng) before

going on to the second one (Lexica 1 Encoding) and so on through the

fi ve gestalts, but rathe r the fi rst gestalt begins ahead of the other

operations in the process and each successive step is constantly

moni tared by the student's brain. Lash1 ey, in his article entitled

11The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior," defines monitoring by

explaining that "after a movement is ini tiated, it is continued unti l

stopped by sensati ons of movement and pos ition, which indi cate.s that

the [student's] 1 imb has reached the desired position" (1 22) . When

the student is sati sfied that the necessary morphology, phonology,

semantics, and syntax are correct and/or complete, that student

continues ·on to the next sentence. The crucial element� then, in

Fry's · schema is time {158) and in Lashley's explanation it is sentence

completion {188).

A look at another example illustrates an antici pation error ·

that occurs at the level s of lexical and morphemi c encodi ng. Al so,

the re is no real eguiptment needed except fo r a good pai r of running � shoes. The word /ikwrpmant/ wi thout the ! is the intended word, but the t is added as a result of the word except which is found a few

words later in the sentence. It should be noted that the error occurs

in the stressed syl lable of that word and in the word it antici pates .

Because the 1 etter .2. is found in · both words and the stress fa11 s on

l�" U'"()� ·::.> i L,.., 4- 14

the syl lable containing the consonant [p], may be all the more reason why this student unconsciously placed a ! in the word equi ptment. The error can . also be the result of the student's di lenma about which idiomatic preposition to use: except meaning other than or the col loquial version except for meaning if it were not fo r. This indecision coul d have caused the anticipation erro r because the student's mind· was distracted by other · de-cisions. Li kewi se, it is possible that this student reanal yzed the word. The verb equ ip in the I past tense is spelled /3kwrpt/ . The -ed sounds like a [t]. The student may have been · thinking about past tense and the voiceless /t/ , and added the morpheme {ment} to the word in order to deri ve the noun fo rm . There are a great many operations at work when the student is in the process of constructing an orthographical l y-correct sentence.

In this particular instance, the lengthy mon itoring process and the morphophonemic rules of grammar may have col lided to produce the error cited above. This error points particularly to the importance of proofreading and edi ting material after it has been written. The inexperi enced writer is not likely to go through these extra steps because thi s kind of writer is not accustomed to checking and re­ checki ng the wri tten word .

In the next example, there is a substitution error. A vowel is substituted fo r the letters er. The example re ads: The word victory sounded like the right thi ng to pray for, yet did they rea lly undustand what an actual victory would result in? In thi s error the student 's mind was operati ng at the motor level of putting a thought 15

orthographically on paper and monitoring the other levels of encodi ng for correctness and completeness of thought. This student may have been concentrating on the wo rd actual whi le the arm and hand muscles wrote the word undustand. The student antici pated the [u] in . I /�k�yual / and that letter.!! unconsciously made its way into the word I I /And�rst�nd/ as /Andust�nd/ . The frequency of the letter� in this sentence also contributes to the likel ihood of .error. the /';)r/ and

/u/ have simi lar features in that both use rounded · lips to fonn the sounds and the tongue is placed low and back in the mouth. The error occurs in the unstressed syl lable of the word, and an unstressed syl lable many times assumes the schwa or /;J/ sound. In thi s sentence the student seems to be in doubt about expressing thi s thought. The person begins the sentence with the wo rds The word victory as though the wri ter were going to define or explain victory, and then continues on a different trend of tho ught by aski ng a question concerning what an actual victory entailed. This uncertainty about how to express the thought and subsequent time lapse that slowed down the encodi ng process probabl y added to the confusion and resulted in the anticipa- tion error.

In the next two examples , the anticipation erroroccurs wi thin the wo rd itsel f whereas previous examp les dealt with erro rs that resulted be cause of ot her words in the sentence. The fi rst example reads : But I would think the man was a sage , who has dealt with the promblem and tho ught it out to both ends . In the word problem 16

/prfbl�m/ the student has placed an �in the fi rst syllable in anti ci­ pation of the m which occurs in the second syl lab le. The /m/ is a strong nasal sound which is formed by closing the mouth and allowing the air to escape through the nose. The /b/ , on the other hand, is a voiced bilabial which· is formed by closing the lips, vibrating the vocal cords, and then allowing the air to explode from the lips as they are opened. Both of these sounds can be easily articul ated, one right after the other, because of the unconscious ease by which the velum opens or closes. Since there are no othe r m•s in the same clause, it can safely be assumed that this student anticipated the /m/ sound at the end of the word and concentra ted· so heavily on that particular sound that the student unconsciously placed an � before the b as well as after the e. There is phoneti c similari ty as wel l because the [p], [b], and [m] are a natural bilabial set in Engl ish.

The ending of this sentence, to both ends, tel ls me that the student was uncertain about how to end thi s sentence because there may have been some confusion over whether to state it thought it out completely and the strong desire to mention that the man considered both aspects of the problem. Phonetics, semantics, and syntax become confused, and therefore, the anticipation error is more likely to occur than if the student were only concerned with spelling. This indeci sion contri butes to the 11probl em.11

The second example is another within-the-word anticipation error. The sentence reads as fo llows : The piece .. Eulogy fo r Anwa r

Sadat,.. it almost accuses death to be a thief of mand-kind. The 17

syntactic structure of this sentence is erroneous , fi rst, because the

student has pleonasti c double subjects , piece and it, and this pro­

nomi nal apposition is a colloquial syntactic pattern prevalent here in

the Midwest. Second, the student chooses the wrong preposition,

namely, to instead of the mo re appropriate one of. The concern ,

though, is not wi th syntax although· this may be an intrusion that

interferes with the studentls error of anticipation.

The d of the second syl lable, . kind, interfe red with the

student•s spelling of the first part of the word. /M�nkaynd/ is one

word wi·thout the hyphen . . Whether or not to insert the hyphen caul d have been a source of confusion fo r the student when writi ng the word .

Both syl labl es have an n in them and this similari ty of structure makes it easier for the inexperienced writer to p 1 ace the � on both words without even realizing it. This parti cul ar word can be accented

on the first or second syl lable, depending on the stress and� intona­

tion of the sentence. In this parti cular case it undoubtedly fal ls on the second syl lable . All these intrusions , namely, doubt about

syntactic structure , doubt about the hyphen , and anticipation of the morpheme being given sentential stress, may have been contri buting

fa ctors that added to the likel ihood of the antici pation error in

spel ling. The student wa s monitoring other areas and proceeding

through the stages of encoding and, because of doubt concerning these

competing gestal ts , created an obvious spel ling error.

Now it- is time to turn to another. area of mi sspelling known as perseveration. It is the reverse of antici pation and in many ways 18

related to it. Cohen defi nes perseveration by stating that it occurs

11Whenever a segment is produced which clearl y refl ects the infl uence of a segment tha t had a 1 ready occurred earl ier ... " ( 89). Persevera­

tion errors occur less frequently than antici pation errors , and there are hints to the process determi ning why in the article entitl ed

"Consonant Features in Speech Errors 11 by van den Broecke and

Goldstein. They hypothesize that 11initial segments in a word and/or syl lable are mo re likely to be affected by speech/ [wri tten] erro rs than syl labl e- or word-fi nal segments, possibly because they are more focused on during production .. (48). Likewi se, Nooteboom in his arti cle 11The Tongue Sl ips into Patterns,11 notes that:

Anticipations far outnumber perseverations .... This predomi ­

nance of anticipa.tions gives us the impression that the

speaker 's [wri ter's] attention is normally di rected to the

future . Preoccupa tion with what has already been

spoken/[written], resul ting in perseverations seems to be a

rel atively ra re event . Experi mental evidence was . given,

however, that the percentage · of perseverations increases considerably, when the speaker/ [wri ter] is forced to pro­

nounce/ [write] phrases that are intuiti vely fe lt as

di ffi cult . (147)

Moreover, Cohen contends that physical fa ti gue may be a strong factor infl uencing this type of erro r (90) . There was no way of measuring fi fty Freshman Composition students for level s of fatigue, but it is 19

reasonab1 e to assume that ti redness contri butes to erro r frequency , especi ally when so many times students wri te themes late at night or early in the morning.

The fi rst exa�ple is as fol lows : Al so the psychologist must be a trained professi onal because some · depressed individual s are sui ci dua 1 and the wrong word or a break of trust could be fata 1 fo r I the pa tient. /Su�srdyu�l/ is a perseveration of the word I /znd�v2dyu,l s/ . Both ual 's occur in the fourth syl labl e, and in both wo rds the accent fal ls on the third syl lable. As a resul t of thi s misspelling, su.icidual . contains an extra syl lable. Moreover, indi­ viduals is a noun whereas suicidual is an adjective. The proximity of the words, pl us the fact that they have some similar letters , could have encouraged the misspel led word . There is an obvious 1 ack of punctuation in this sentence , namely; the omission of commas after the word also and - after the fi rst part of the compound sentence which ends with the error suicidual . The student experienced several gestalts, which in turn contributed to the likel ihood of the perseveration error. Those interfe rences , such as doubt about punctuation and the similarity of letters wi thin both words indivi duals and suicidual , are going on at the same time that the student is writing the sentence down on paper.

In the second exampl e, which reads Floyd Del l was filled wi th dismay and dispare when he learned the truth , there are two per- ' severations, one in each syl lable of the word /d�pEr/ . The student

persists in spel ling the word despair in the same manner as the word

dismay . Phonetical ly, both words are simi l ar, namely, /drsp�r/ and 20

I /dlzme/ . As a result of simi lar sounds , the land � of dismay find

their way into the spe 11 i ng of the word despair as dis pa re . The

student was · obviously aware of the spelling of dismay and the con­ centration level of the student on that particular word carried over

to the subsequent error. The j_ of dismay and the � of despair have

the centra 1 1 ax I II sound because the fi rst syl l ab1 es of both words

are unstressed. Both words contain · the consonant d as their fi rst

letters , the first syl lables have the same sound , both wo rds have two

syl l ab1 es wi th the stress fa 11 i ng on the second syl l ab1 e, and both

words have the vowe l a in the second syl lable. With so much

simi larity in their fa vor, the writer seems to hypothesize that both

wo rds could easily be spel led in the same manner.

The thi rd exampl e is as fo llows : The self-conscious wa lker is / also easi ly spotted by a watchful pa sser bye r. The word lp�s�rbay�rl

is a perseveration error whereby the writer continues to dwel l on the

sounds , syl lables, and morphemes that precede the error. It is a

compound word made up of a noun and preposition , and according to

Webster's New World Di ctionary, should be hyphenated. This student is

aware of the morphophonemic ru le that states : add {-er} to the end of

a verb in· order to change it to a noun. The confusion ari ses when

there is an ac companying preposition as well. The student may have

recalled the rule with th e wo rd end remaining a dominant part of it.

The word wal ker is also a noun wh ich is fo rmed by adding {-er} to the

· verb wa lk. The perseveration that occurs in the sentence above takes

place wi thin the word , but the fact that there is another verb-turned­

noun in the same sentence ma kes the likel ihood of error much greater. 21

Al so , the effect of anticipated sententi a 1 stress in the sentence coul d definitely be a contributing factor.

Anti�ipation and its reverse, perseveration, appear to be particular types of errors to which inexperienced writers are prone.

Because the mi nd works continual ly during the different stages of the encoding process, all the whi le monitori ng that whi ch it has encoded, it has quite a task to compl ete . No one is immune to these kinds of errors. Antici pation occurs mo re often when there are other intru­ sions into the encoding process, such as simi l arity between erro r and another word or words in the sentence , undue concern about the spel l­ ing of a particular word , and doubt about. syntax or mo rphophonemi c rules� Other contributing factors to perseveration errors in parti­ . cular may be physical fatigue and semanti c uncertainty, both of which cause confusion in the encoding process. Erro rs of this nature are interesting and enl i ghtening because they allow teachers and re­ searchers to unde rstand more clearly the intricate workings of the mind, and certainly demonstrate that the exceptions prove the rules. 22

APPENDIX

Anticipation:

The convenconal method of new life in humans requires two parents.

As a member � the "bab� boomer" era I can not afford to quit trying to achieve in todays worl .

I have found many comparasions and contrasts .

This would give new information on new forms of life, differnent body forms , and different nutrition _for the needs of Ma rtians or whatever.

Scientists are searching fo r a "swith" that they beli eve tri ggers reproductivity of life.

There wi ll be ma ssive economical and technical advances because of man •s strife to control his own life.

Bourgeouis or capitalist means the communal sol idarism as an alter­ native to capitalist individual ism and sociali st collecti vism.

Monday I work on my Research paper all day �most of that night. I wanted to get done because I wanted to leave early for Thanksgiving. But once it was done I fea lt geart .

Other p 1 aneta ri an exi stance mi ght enab1 e us to gain va 1 uab 1 e knowledge.

Perseveration:

The East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enumerous number of Western intel l ectual s.

At SDSU you may have - a easier time getting help with some of your weakier subjects .

There is this real ly dumb show on t.v. It is about these people who 1 ive together in Africa an they share everything I mean everything. There clothes there hair and it is really werid.

Hundreds of thousands wi ll die in infancy from mal nutrition ; mi llions o.f others will survi ve but wi ll be limited in their physical and mental capasi 1 ities , because of the del il itating effects of severe malnutrition 1n or at infancy. 23

CHAPTER 2

BLENDS

A blend or portmanteau wo rd is defined by Rulon Wel ls in his arti cle entitl ed "Predicting Sl ips of the Tongue11 as 11the simplest

kind of slip of the tongue •.•formed from two other words (very ra rely more than two ) by dividing ea.ch of the two original words into two parts , and combining one part from each ori ginal word into the new word called the bl end.. (85). It is not unconvnon in the Engl ish language to fuse words in order to compact our word structure into mo re meaningful expressions . Tel evi sion commercials adverti se the all new fl exerciser whi ch hel ps people to ma intain physical fitness at home . The blend flexerciser is the combination of the adj ecti ve fl exibl e and the noun exerciser. Jerry Lewi s has his annual telethon over Labor Day to promote the Muscular Dy strophy As soc iation. The wo rd te 1 ethan is a b 1 end of the two nouns te 1 ephone and rnara thon .

These two words are combined and blended into one word with an extend­

ed meaning. In addition to all these "commerci al " blends , there a.re · also political bl ends. Reaganomi cs is a term that has become quite popular over the last coupl e years , and it attempts to put into concise terminol ogy just what is happening in the economic affai rs of the nation under Presi dent Reagan. This word is a blend of two nouns , a proper and a common, namely, Reagan and economics.

Bl ends are becomi ng increasingly noted curiosities in literature . For example, in the preface of Lewis Carroll 's "The 24

Hunting of the Snark," he di scusses portmanteau words and declares that:

Humpty-Dumpty 's theory, of two meanings packed into one wo rd

like a portmanteau, seems to me the right expl anation fo r

all. For instance , take the two words •fuming• and

•furious . • Make up your mind that you will say both words

but leave it unsettl ed which· you wi ll say first. Now open

your mouth and speak. If your thoughts inc 1 i ne ever so

1 i ttl e towards • fuming • you wi 11 say • fuming-furious •; if

they turn , by even a hai r's breadth towa rds 'furious,• you

wi 11 say • furious-fuming• ; but if you have that ra rest of

gifts , a perfectly bal anced mind, you will say •frumious .•

(754)

Fromkin contends , though, that "[this] sort of •compl ete • blend is sel dom found in just this way in •normal • speech/ [writing]. That is, a blend of /fyuri3s/I and /fyu/ mi� I · 1. s more apt to occur as /f. yu I mi;)s/ or , /fyur%�/, parti cularly because the fi rst syl lables are identical 11 ("The Non-Anoma 1 ous Nature of Anomalous Utterances" 29). A further note of interest is that of the fi ve categories of errors that I analyzed, bl ends formed the largest category of 11i nteresting11 errors . Mo reover, Fromkin goes on to explain further that blends are more commonly the combining of words which are :

Represented by a set of semantic features which to gether

constitute its •meaning. • Where two words have the same set 25

of features, or closely overlapping sets it is mo re likely

that blends will occur since a choice is involved by the

speaker/ [writer] in attempting to verbali ze [transcri be] his

message.

(Speech Errors as Lingui stic Evidence 36)

Fromkin implies that most blends that occur are usually the same fo rm cl ass , that is, noun/noun , verb/verb, or adjective/adjective combina­ tions or that both words are taken from nearby semantic storage areas

in the brain; there thus arises a dil emma over which word of the set to use . The problem is resol ved by the brain's unconscious combini ng of portions of both words and ultimately the wri ter "invents" a new one, sometimes wi thout ever reali zing it.

In the fi rst example, the sentence reads : He was just a person who wa nted a simpl ier way of life. The student blends the two words simpler and easier to arri ve at the fused wo rd simpl ier. Simpl e

and easy are synonymous and the student was searching for an adjecti ve

that means uncompl icated. Two words are pull ed from storage . The · adjective being sought had to be put into the comparative degree, which meant adding {-er} to the adjecti ve . In the word simple , it is

necessary to add only an � to the end of the word. In the case of the word easy, another step is requi red. This rul e of grammar states that when an adjective ends in� and the comparative degree is desired , one

must change the� to l· before adding {-er}. It is obvious that this

student wrestled with two words wi th similar meanings , and indecision

on a choice of wo rd prompted the unconscious combi nation of the two 26

wo rds. Furthermore , thi s blend resembl es and sounds like an Engl ish wo rd . It ts not just syl lables thrown together at random , but it is a precise_ plan that the grarrmar of Engl ish word formation dictates. In this particular example it is not so much phonology or morphology that is the overriding factor detennini ng the b 1 end but the semanti c property. As M. F • . Garrett says in his article entitled 11Level s of

Processing in Sentence Productjon , .. 11There is significant paral lelism in the system, and it begins with semantically detennined lexical selection11 (211). The· encoding process is slowed down because of a time lag involved in this semanti c encoding, and as a result, the fused words are constructed.

At this poi -nt, the wo rd fused needs some clari fi cation. Fused means to joi n or unite by 11melting11 or blendi ng together. Blend, on the other hand, means to mix or fuse thoroughly so that parts me rge and are no longer distinct . Fusing, then, may be a more speci fic term in explaining exactly what happens when a blend occurs. In the fi rst example, simpl ier resulted after the {eas-} of easier was blended into obl ivion . It ceased to exist. Only the simpl of simpl er and the ier of easier were joined to fo rm this unique wo rd. Fusing, then, is a term that refers not only to the combi ning of two synonymo us wo rds but also to the major loss of morphemic material .

For example, this next sentence displays the fusion of two adj ectives . Actually jogging coul d be considered hazardious to your I / v / heal th. /H�zardi�s/ is a blend of /h�z�rd�s/ and trnJyurias;. Both words hazardous and injurious are adjecti ves and their last syl lable 27

is ous. Hazardous means dangerous , risky, or peri lous and injurious denotes harmful or damaging. Therefore , both words are similar in meaning in terms of a cause/effect relationship. This student•s brain went to storage looki ng for a word fitting the categories 11adjective11 and .. not good or not he a 1 thful . .. Two words , hazardous and i nj uri ous were retrieved as possibilities. Both words end in ous, which adds to the confusion and indeci sion . .. Ul timately the · brain fused the two wo rds together by joining hazard from one adj ective to ious of the other. It is a blend that resembles and sounds like an Engl ish wo rd ; therefore , this student quickly and - unconsci ously accepted it. A cute impi sh glance from her eyes can eli viate any trouble / that might have come her way. In the above sentence /�l iviet/ phonetically resembl es the grapheme all eviate. The word eliminate was a 1 so going through this student • s mind. A 11evi ate means to decrease or reduce and el iminate means to remove or get ri d of. Both words have four syl lables , syntactically both are verbs , both have similar meanings, and their fi rst and last syl lables are phonetical ly al ike.

In trying to decide which word to choose, the student automaticaliy combined the two words because of their many simi lari ties.

The next sentence reads : The lyri cs in Wake Up Little Susie are a long way from being pennissous but fo r that time they drew / / attention. /P�rmis�s/ is a fusion of the two words /p�rmts�/ and / /promrskyuas/ . Permi ssive means overindulgent and promiscuous means an overindulgence in sexual behavior. In the song that this student alludes to the young boy and hi s girl friend fall asleep in a car and 28

get home late. There are sexual overtones, but only in terms of what sleeping together connotes in the minds of people. Permissi ve and promiscuous are adjectives , both have the initial letter £_, both contain the consonants r_, .!!!_, and �' both have shades of similar meaning, and stress is on the second syl lable of both words. This particular student was searchi ng for an adj ective that connotes sexual permi ssiveness. Since both words are similar in sound, meaning, structure , and stress , this student fused the initial portion of one word with the final portion of the other. The new word is not forei gn or nonsensical sounding ; · on the contrary , it very much resembles a wo rd in the Engl ish language .

As the direct result of intensive blend analysi s, Rulon Wel ls devised three laws regarding bl ends which he considers necessary components in order for a word to be a "true" blend.

The Fi rst Law . A slip of the tongue/[pen] is practically

always a phonetical ly possible noi se/[word].

The Second Law. If the two original words are rhythmical ly

similar, a blend of them wil l, with high probabil ity,

rhythmically resembl e both of them.

The Third Law. If the two ori ginal words contain the same

sound in the same position , a blend of them will contain

that sound in that position . (86) 29

These three laws of Wel ls certainly apply to the examples analyzed previously and also to the ones analyzed subsequently. As a matter of fact, the next blend expl icitly displays all of these qualities. _ The sentence reads : As a society we have seen the number of alcoholics increase . We now see the need fo r more empathis on curi ng the problem drinker. ; (mp�8i/ and ; :mf�SXs/ are the two words which fo rm the bl end empathis in the sentence above. Empathy means the ability to share in another's emotions or feel ings whereas emphasis denotes special attention gi ven to something in order to make it stand out. Thi s student blended two wo rds whose meanings are inferred by the ma nner in which both sentences are expressed. There are obvious simi larities between these two words , namely, stress on the fi rst syl lable, three syl lables in both words , initial letters em, and the

1 etters £. and a corrmon to both words. A 1 though the meanings are di fferent, the student has both meanings in mind when referring to the problems of heavy drin kers . Wi th all this simi l arity in both words , the student became confused over which word to use, and resolved the confl ict by bl ending both wo rds to 11Create11 the wo rd above .

As John D. M. Laver points out in his article entitl ed 11The

Detection and Correction of Sl ips of the Tongue,11 1 1The planning function [of the student 's brain] acti vates mo re items from storage than it final ly selects for the neurolinguistic program.. (135).

Obv i ously, this student sel ected two possible word choices, empathy and emphasis, and because of the indecision, thi s wri ter ul timately bl ended the wo rds instead of choosing one and di sca rdi ng the other. 30

In the next sentence, the fused word is a combination of the two nouns frustration and futi lity. Sudden ange r and frustrility we both had when we finally real ized what had happened. The fusion / /frAstrilati/ is an unusual -sounding word, but it becomes obvious to the reader what the writer's intentions are . In most cases the blends are not enigmatic but rather creative semantic innovations (as in adve rtising language). Frustration and futility both have simi lar defi ni tions, namely, defeat of purpose or inability to realize something. As the student's brain wa s engaged in semantic encoding, it searched fo r a noun with the meaning "sense of hopelessness, .. and pul led out these two words as possible choices. Indecision coupled with a lapse in the time seq uence caused the brain to fuse frustration and futility into the uni que frustri lity. This fusion contains fo ur syl lables as in the word futility, and retains th e same sy ntax in the sentence. The two competing words hav.e the ini tial consonant f._ and the vowe 1 u in them a 1 bei t with differe nt sounds , namely, /A I and

/yu/ . It is worth noting in each of the blends thus far the unusual combinations which resembl e meaningful words in structure, stress , and phonology . Archibald Hill confirms my findings when he notes in his article entitl ed "A Theory of Speech Errors" that "in all ... blends there is an element of phonetic simi lari ty" (207).

Besides this phonetic similari t y, blends are also the resul t of two competing col l ocations , and Fromkin wri tes about the notion of

"competing .. in the introduction to her book enti tled Errors in Lin­ guistic Performance: Sl ips of the Tongue, Ear, Pen, and Hand. She 31

says that .. Errors occur when , pri or to articulation/ [wri ting], the speaker/ [wri ter] is presented with a •competing plan• .. (2). Carol

Fowl er, in h�r review article of Fromkin's book mentioned above, goes on to say:

Errors occur wh�n segments · are concurrently availabl e in a

plan and that two segments compete for a slot in the planned

utterance/[sentence] to the extent that they are simi lar.

This hypothesis predicts that the relative frequency of a

given target-error pai r is a function both of the likel ihood

that the two segments are concurrently in mind and of thei r

phonetic simi l ari ty; two concurrently available segments are

more likely to interact the more similar they are. (823)

According to Fromkin and Fowl er, then , there are .. competing plans11 during the encoding process which, together with phonetic similari ty, cause the student to blend or fuse certain words instead of choosing one over the other.

In this next sentence two phrases instead of two words are blended which results in a most interesting and unusual fus ion . We ' ve all heard the old saiding 11Star light star bright wish I may wish I might have this wish I wish tonight... This student appears to be wrestl ing wi th two phrases, namely, heard it sa·id and heard the old saying. Instead of choosing one or the other, this student combined the phrases and took heard the old ing of one phrase plus said of the other phrase and arri ved at the unusua l word above . The verb said has 32

the { - ..:!�.9) of the noun sayi ng attached to it and as a resul t, a syntactically erroneous word is deri ved.

Here again in this last example, two phrases are ultimately fused because the student • s brain was wrestl ing with the selection process. In my opinion peopl e don •t have a perspective po int of view in time of war. The two phrases , proper perspective and clear po int of view, present problems of indeci sion with whi ch the brain has to cope . Unconsciously, the student picked the word perspective of one phrase and joined it to po int of view from the other. Proper per­ spective mean.s the ability to see thi ngs in a true relationship whereas po int of view means a menta l attitude or opi nion. Since the meanings are similar, the phrases can be used interchangeably. In fact, the student may have been thinki ng of the word prope r instead of clear, and it is likely that the student arri ved at perspecti ve because of both words • simila ri ti es , namely, initial consonant £ and the letters er.

Ameri can wri ters may tend to favor b 1 ends because we are so immersed in media which subl iminally affects us . The blends consist of two words joined for the benefi t of conciseness . Snappy slogans and portmanteau words attract attention and give people a sense of being different and unusua l in a world of mass-produced sameness.

Students unconsciously form blends in thei r writing because the mechanism of the brain simultaneously retrieves two words similar in meaning and this causes indecision about which word to use. This refers to the gestal ts that occur during the encoding process and the 33

act of 11Competing11 that resul ts when the student• s brain retri eves more than one word from storage. As Hockett remi nds us :

The phonological system of a language imposes a variety of

constraints on what speakers/ [wri ters ] of the language may

say/ [write], by way of either smooth speech/ [correct

writing] or lapses/[�rro rs]. The most general of these

constraints is... th at two words or phrases cannot be

uttered/ [written] simultaneously. (98)

It is said that humans have an inexhaustibl e ingenuity for coping with unexpected situations, and certainly this category - of erro rs illus­

trates the innovative element in human language . 34

APPENDIX

Bl ends and Fusions

Because there is not a permanent, re 1 i able way to store the radi a­ active wastes produced at nuclear power plants around the world, there is a huge amount of backlog. Backl og which dratically needs to be taken care of.

I guess just emotionally I would want my family and my self to show more outwa rd feel ings, and this would differ from my parents • lives emensely.

It wa s diffi cult for him to go anywhere without being hastl ed.

Life wi ll never change that dra stical ly as to not ever have prej udi sm.

The trinkl ing of the clear, sparkling water is running over the rocks and downstream.

People in Orwel l•s day cou ld only hear about through hear say or through a very stati cy radi o. It would be as 1 ucri dious as anything to suggest that rock fi rst captured the essence of man •s desi res ....

I didn•t real ize all the pains of heartship.

Whi 1 e he served on the Senate , he was fo r i nmediat e and comp 1 ete explori tation by pri vate interests of the nation •s natural resources.

He went back to shut the house door. The cat had wisened up by thi s time, so when Joe came back to ...•

He does actknolize that writing is not for everyone, but just as cows give us milk, Mencken gives us his thoug hts on paper.

Pink Floyd , al so, chall enged cognitive enli ghtenment in the recently popular song Just Another Brick in the Wal l, while he pathetically bel l ared the contradictory (and granmatical ly incorrect) phrase 11We don 1 t need no education... .

She went to many hospital camps , but the sight that she saw when she wa lked in was disguisting. She went to camp Ca iro and found it fi l thy.

George Orwel l brings out the decl ination of our wri ting and speaking.

Herpes can be disgnoised but can •t be cured. 35

APPENDIX (continued)

They are expec ted to participate in the upl iftment of the nation .

During those infl uential years when children are impressioned by either outside or inside sourecs, or those which are posotive or negati ve, it is hoped that thedlrect infl uences the nuclear fami ly had on shaping soci ety itself, will have the same infl oence on those members of society within the nuclear fami ly.

In my opinion I have been a nice person to everyone and have taken advantage of the opportunities I _ have had upti l today. It had taken the government a decade to get back the property Fall had sold in cash and bonds , and to put two of the puncipals in jail.

His speech on how we woul d have victory; having God Almighty granting to our soldi ers a strong and fierceful hand in combat.

Imagery is an intrical part to these plays.

I am constantly amazed by the immaculous happeni ngs in the Bible.

Al though my time in the hospi tal sure wasn 't a great event, it sure will be a rememberable one.

That would change dramastically the best place to live and the best way of life.

According to an al i enated Mexi can , he made $200 a month along with 3-6 mi llion other wetbacks who have relatively low pay al so.

Simply fo r the sati sfication of his whims.

On the other end of the specul um it appears that not many people are interested in hard work.

There is still a lot of di scri mination and predudi sm.

I stombl ed into the hall wi th my luggage 1n hand to check into my room . ...He had become ill with a fateful disease .

After I arrived we elected to go down to the mun incipal Liquor store and have a few beers .

As I'm growi ng life is going to be even more technical ized. 36

APPENDIX (continued)

My friend had confronted this guy and they tal ked about what was go ing on and the guy went to a physcatri st fo r awhile and was diagnosed as " cured ...

The bi rds chi rped vi rgiously and we moved peaceful ly on down the river.

Every muscle in his body becomes tense, his hands begen to sweat, as he holds the steering wheel , and excelorates the pickup toward the wayward cow.

Al though Charles Lindberg recieved numerious medals, offers of money , congradulations from high raniTng political fi gures , and parades, he never deterred from his goal of promoting the development and use of airplanes.

Aslo there are some moves that are pretensional ly dange rous and therefore stopped.

His methods again show good judgment in tha t he got the attention of his audience with a controversial introduction (a messenge r from God) and used good, relatabl e examples to illustrate his points.

This again, is due to a more technologized society.

There not physically fri ghtened of them, they just think that they 're not:Smart enough to operate some new electronical gadget.

Many times grade two thinkers ali enate people because of their contra­ dictive ways .

Running al so helps the cardio-vasculatory system and it gives the heart and lungs exercise.

In a town whose peopl ul ation is just over 1,300 the VFW cha pter has nearl y 180 members.

Running is helpful for you phys icily and mental.l y. As a resul t, [of wa tching too much tel evi sion] I go to class wi th an uncompleted Al gebra assignment and I feel as if the teacher is talking in Greek to the class. The types of jobs we hol d as we go through life are very important to us� Some are tremendously gratify ing and enjoyful , whi le others are not. 37

APPENDIX (continued)

Due to South Dakota 's inclimate weather, silage tends to freeze in a stove silo and is scraped off the top. 38

CHAPTER 3

METATHESIS

Metathesis is a word etymologically deri ved from Greek and defined as the transposition of letters or sounds in a word. This particular kind of spel ling error occurs frequently- in the wri tten compositions of inexperienced wri ters . In the following examples an intense analysis is directed at the word, its syllabification, its stress , its pronunciati on, its syntax, and its qualities of articulati on. Mi na Shaughnessy , in her book enti tl ed Erro rs and

Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Wri ting, contends that inexperi enced writing students are:

accustomed to seeing whole words rather than word parts and

to seeing the beginnings of those configurations more

clearly than the middl es , where letters tend to coagu­

late •••• Spel ling, the 11 l eveler11 of letters , demands equal

attention to a 11 1 etters whereas speech and reading demand

sel ecti ve attention to words and syl lables . (174)

This quote reflects the gestalt model of encoding in its lexical and phonemic steps that is referred to in an earl ier chapter. Inexperi­ enced writers lack this distinct ability to focus on indi vidual letters of words. Many of the themes from which these examples were taken were wri tten out in 1 onghand as opposed to being typewritten ; 39

therefore , each letter of each word was fanned with some kind of

phonemic order in mind.

In the first example, The game was in the fourth gaurter and

we had a comfortab1 e 1 ead, the a and u of the word g ua rter are

transposed. It may be possible that this parti cular student per- / severated the ou of the previous word. /Kw:Jrt3r/ and /fore; have

similar sounds , namely, the /or/ . Looking at Shaug hnessy •s diagnosis,

one observes in this case that the student did indeed look at the

whole wo rd rather than each letter in the word , and as a result,

metathesi zed the middl e part of it. Furthermore , the pronunciation of I I the word as /kort�r/ rather than /kw,:, rtar/ may have added to the

spelling confusion. The assimi l ati on of· the � and ar to simply or may

have been decei ving as well. There is emphasis on the word fo urth and

the stress fal ls on the first syl lable of quarter. This emp hasis and

intonation coul d also have contributed to the error.

The next example reads as fol lows : At the time my father and

grandfather started the construction , buisness was good. The word /b�znas/ is deri ved as a resul t of the adjecti ve busy plus the � morpheme {-ness}, namely, /bl:zin e:s/ . Over - the yea rs the y_ became i

and then eventually became a s i 1 ent 1 etter. What resul ted was a

two-syllable word which had fo nnerly been a three-syl labled one. The

.!! assumed the sound of I II and thi s change presents s pe 11 i ng di ffi­

cul ty to a great many students. This inexperienced wri ter is aware

that the word itsel f contains both a�and an l, but becomes confused , on their order in the word because the old word /b�zine:s/ retains its 40

original spelling while adopting a new pronunciat·ion. · Even though the

11gestalt11 ori ented writer does not think in terms of deri vation and etymologies, it is important to point out that, because of deri vation, the word presents spelling difficul ty.

Furthe nnore, in the sentence the student wri tes the construc­ tion as though wanting to say the construction business but hesitating because of the use of business as the very next word. It may be this doubt about using the same word again and perhaps not being able to th ink of another synonym to replace it that caused this inexperienced writer to transpose the �and l·

In the thi rd example, the mo rpheme -�}{ is transposed as

�· Mi suseag of cloning coul d result in total catastrophe as wel l as limi ting our cha nce of survival . The metathesis occurs in the second syl labl e which is the accented or stressed one. Confusion may ha-ve arisen because of the word use which may have been reanalyzed from this particular noun fonn. Use is both a verb and a noun whereas misusage is a noun constructed from the verb misuse by adding the morpheme {-age}. The word tha t the student really shoul d have used is misuse because it refers · to the incorrect or improper use of something. On the other hand and ironically, mi susage general ly refers to the mi sappl icati on of words . Here we have another case of hypercorrection. This inexperi ­ enced writer confuses the proper meani ngs of these two wo rds, mi suse and mi susage , and inadvertently chooses the wrong noun. Sti ll further, this particul ar student may have used the dictionary, but in 41

so doing, she chose the first of the two words that appea rs in the

col umn . In this case mi susage is found iJTITlediately before mi suse.

Because this writer knew approximately the word she wanted but di d not

realize the re are two similar words except for morpheme endi ngs, she

just picked the fi rst word that she found without investi gating

further the variant meaning of both mi susage and mi suse. This hyper­

correction, then , is a going beyond correct to the 11i nnovati ve11

incorrect.

Another sentence reads: Of course there w.i 11 be aches and

pa ins after a ten mi le jog, but these tri vial nusi ances are easily

forgotten with the real izati on of highly toned muscles and eliminati on

of excess body fat · (if there is any 1 eft) . The word nuisances is I mi sspel led because the u and i are transposed. /Nus3ns�s/ as opposed � to /nusians�s/ means that because of the mi splacing of two vowels, the

error becomes a four-syl labl ed word instead of three. This parti cular wo rd presents spelling difficulty because the i is silent. It is

another case whe re the word has undergone a pronunciation change after

being adopted from another language but retains some of the letters of

its original French spel ling.

The word easily which fol lows two words after the misspel led

wo rd may have been anticipated whi le this . student wrote nuisances .

They both have three syl lables , stress on the fi rst syl lable, some

similar letters , and the j_ of both the misspel led wo rd and the word

easily occur in the second syl lable. 42

On the other - hand, it may be a case of perseveration of the i in trivial , which inmediately precedes the error. Trivial is not a word common to the average student •s active vocabulary whereas easily is. This use of the not-so-corrmon adjective may have caused thi s inexperienced writer to concentrate more heavily on that word, and as a result, misspel l another uncommon -word nuisances. In thi s case both correctly-spelled words have three syl lables and the stress is on the fi rst syl lable. The student may have realized that, first, there is an i in nuisances, and second, it is a silent letter; therefore , one does not have to worry about where to p 1 ace it because it is not pronounced anyway . Since this inexperienced wri ter - concentrated so heavily on the spelling of trivial and its ia vowel order, thi s student automatical ly perseverates the ia spelling in the wo rd nusiances, wi thout realizing of course that because of the vowel transposition , the word assumes four syl lables . This word certainly fi ts Shaughnessy •s contention that inexperi enced wri ters see the beginnings and ends but not the mi ddl es of words because these wri ters focus on entire wo rds instead of individual letters -in words .

In the fo llowing sentence a student transposes a consonant cl uster. They also act as though they just came out of a mental intsi tution. Metathesis occurs between the consonants s and t in the I� wo rd /:rnst�tusan/ . According to a personal communication which Victoria Fromkin had wi th Peter Ladefoged (a linguist particul arly interested in acoustic phonetics), she received verification that the position of the sibilant [�] is a difficul t sound fo r people to judge 43

wi thi n words ( Speech Errors as Lingu istic Evidence 228) . The per­ ception of the · "hiss" noise that [s] makes is very diffi cul t for speakers/[writers], especial ly those who transcribe what they say , to recognize wi thin. a word . Consequently, it appears that thi s student had difficulty placing the /s/ wi thin the word insti tution. The /t/ is an unvoiced phoneme which combines wi th /s/ to fo nn a consonant cluster st. The combinations /st/ and /ts/ are features coll111on to

Engl ish words. There may have been anticipation of the /t/ sound in subsequent syl labl es of the word. It may also be the case that this student was not keenly aware of the middl e of this polysyllabic word , and as Shaughnessy stresses, "is accustomed to seeing who 1 e words ra ther than word parts" {174). In · addition , it could also be that thi s student is infl uenced by the nt of the wo rd mental in the pre­ ceding word.

Another example of metathesis occurs in the sentence :

Fianlly, he had something that most sages throughout hi story had--a disbel ieving audience . /FaYn�l i/ become s /faY-nli/ where the /n/ and the /� / are transposed. The fi rst syl lable of the word receives the stress , leaving the last two syl lables unstressed . The second syl lable nal becomes anl . Nal is a combination of sounds conmon to · the Engl ish language whereas anl is not one that is used as a pattern in our writing system. When the adverb fi nally is pronounced , it .I . could be assimi l ated to /faynl l/. It may wel l be that the student syncopated the syl lables /� / and /n/ to /n/ and was aware , neverthe­ less, that the letter a is fo und in the word. 44

The /n/ is a voi ced nasal pronounced by placing the ti p of the

tongue on the a 1 veo 1 a r ridge and a 11owi ng the air to esca pe vi a the

nose. The /A / or /3/ is articulated by using the central part of the

tongue and forcing air out of a widely-opened mo uth. It is just as

easy to pronounce /nA/ or /n;J/ as /A n/ or /� n/ . In the fa nner, the

ti p of the tongue touches the alveol ar ridge and then the ai r is

released through a widely-opened mouth. In the latter, the reve rse

occurs . Since articul ation is unhampered in both cases of pronuncia-

tion, the student mo st likely chose the one closest to the syncopated

version mentioned above , which is more frequently used in rapid

col loquial speech.

The next sentence contains two metathesi zed words . This

semester I should recieve at least a 2.0 for a GPA , thi s is wha t my

advisor says is nessecary · to stay in school . /R�si�/ and /n:sas£ri/ both have letters transposed. The word receive presents spelling

difficulty fo r a great many students who fai l to remember the mn emonic

device taught in grade schoo 1 , namely, 11 [ i] before [e] except after

[c] or when sounded like /e/ in neighbor or weigh or in a separate

syl lable like society, or in caffeine, wei r, or wei rd .. (obviously a

bad · mnemonic device) . The word receive is the Latin derivation of

recipere , and Lati nate words generally present spelling difficulty to

the ave rage student. the [ei ]/[ie] reversals are a source of confusion in many wo rds . The ei is the exception because many mo re wo rds in Engl ish have the ie combination ; hence, students do not 45

remember the rul e concerning the exceptions. The orthograph £assumes the /s/ sound in this word to add to the spelling confusion.

The second metathesis occurs in the word /n{s�s£ri/, another Latin derivation. In this case the consonant c and the geminate � are transposed. The difficulty here 1 ies in the fact that the sibila nt /s/ can be represented by· many different all ographs , namely,

�' ss, �, �, sc, and st. When the c fa l ls between two vowels, as it does in the wo rd necessary, it adopts the sound /s/, otherwise it assumes the sound /k/. This all ophone confusion connected with the sibilant /s/ presents difficulty for many speakers/writers of Engl ish.

This student is aware that there is a£in the wo rd necessary, but is unsure of its position. As Ladefoged stated earl ier, it is difficult to know where to position the /s/ in many words because of the 11noi se11 or 11 hissing" that this phoneme makes within words (Speech Errors as

Linguistic Evidence 228). It is especially difficult to place the /s/ in necessary both because of the doubl e "hiss .. and the fact that two different letters assume the same sound.

In the last example of this speci fic error group, two syl lables are transposed. Patronizing means to be deconscending� In the wo rd /kand� s {ndz �/ there is confusion regarding which morpheme should appear first. {De-} and {con-} are two common prefi xes used in the Engl ish language . It is interesting to note that in this case a morpheme is transposed whereas in previous examples phonemes are metathesized. There may have been confusion in the mechanism of the � / brain between the wo rds I di S£nd/ and I k�n S£nt/ . It is be 1 i eved by 46

that is, prefi xes , suffixes, and roots are stored in certain 11 fi les11 or areas of the brain in addition to whol e words. As the encoding process was progressing, the student became confused about the choice of prefixes� This inexperienced wri ter may have analogized that the de should appear fi rst because the meaning trying to be achieved is

11down11 and the prefi x {de-} means exactly that.

Metathesis can occur within the same syllable, between . two syl lables , and even between words . When - it occurs between words , it is known as a spoonerism (for a mo re detailed look at Professor

Spooner and the medical condi tions which caused his disability, see

Potter's article in Fromkin 1980). Spoonerisms are more common in da i 1 y con versa ti on than they are in the wri tten word.. The metathesi s that most often occurs in written fo rm is the kind between phonemes of the same wo rd. As Donal d G. Mackay , in hi s arti cle .. Spooneri sms : The

Structure of Errors i.n the Seri a 1 Order of Speech, 11 has fo und (and as

I too have discovered}, 11 [In] the average separation of reversed

phonemes.• . it can be seen that reversed phonemes occu rred in adjacent syl lables more frequently than in non-adjacent syl lables .. (170}. It occurs frequently in Freshman Composition papers for a number of reasons. Students may not be fami liar with the middles of words because their precepti on generally does not focus on the i ndi vi dua 1 letters that constitute a word, but on the whole word as a unit. As a resul t, students haphazardly place letters in the mi ddl es of wo rds , relyi ng sol ely on how the words sound in conversation or how they remember seeing the words in pri nt. They usual ly retain the correct 47

spel ling for the initial and fi nal sounds of the word , but the mi ddl e portion many times becomes a fuzzy col l ection of sounds and spellings .

Another reason that inexperienced writers metathesize is because of anticipation or perseveration . This may resul t because of

the students • concentration on certain sounds in the sentence . or

because of similari ty between the misspelled word and some other wo rd

in the sentence. This was the case in the example nui sances where this particular student may have been infl uenced both by anticipation and perseve ration. The anti ci pation may have occu rred beca use of similar stress, similar letters, and same number of syl lables as that of the word easily which fo llows it; it may be a case of persevera­ tion, on· the other hand , because of the vowel similarity, same stress, and same number of syl labl es of the word trivial which precedes it.

As Lashley reveals in his articl e 11The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior,.. 11 the frequency with whi ch such contami nations [antici ­ pations and perseverations] occur is increased by haste, by dis­ traction , by emotional tension, or by uncertai nty and confl ict as to the best fo rm of expression. . (119). Besides these .. contami nations" that result because of anticipations and perseverations , students also tend to metathesize beca use of phoneme confusion .

Phoneme confusion , another reason for metathesis, results mainly because phonemes have va rying .. strengths .. and are capable of fogging wo·rds . In their article enti tled "The Limi ted Use of Distinc­

ti ve Features and Markedness in Speech Production : Evidence . from

Speech Error Data ," Shattuck-Hufnagel and Kl att show in thei r phoneme 48 confusion matrix tha t /s/ , / �/, and /�/ produce mo re erro rs than other phonemes {43). The sibilant /s/ is particularly prone to thi s kind of confusion when it appears mo re than once in the same word in its di fferent all ophonic fo nns. As Shattuck-Hufnage l and Kl att contend,

"most phoneme erro rs occur as the result of a mi s-selection between two similar planning segments competing for a singl e location in an utterance/ [sentence] ..." ( 41 ).

It makes sense , then , that metathesis occurs mainly because of students • unfami liari ty with many po lysyllabic .words , because of thei r anticipation/perseveration of certain letters in other words located in the same sentence , and because of phoneme confusion. Likewi se, if students are limited to a smal ler-than-usual vocabulary, they may have great difficulty writing interesting and varied themes. They remember wo rds from a certain text they read or from hearing them used in the course of a col l ege lecture . In an attempt to become better writers , they begin to vary their wo rd choices , but fa il to use a dicti onary as an aid to spelling and accuracy of meaning. They rely sol ely on phonetics memory . When this happens, a whole new confl uence of productive processes of erro rs surfaces.

It is interesting to note how metathesis correlates so strongly wi th other egregious erro rs . It appears that once i nexperi ­ enced writers begin to ma ke metathesi s errors, they al so produce other ki nds of errors , such as homophone confusion , wrong morpheme se 1 ec­ tion , phoneme substituti ons, and incorrect reanalysis of words. This phenomenon is known as the "convergence effect" and was coined by Dr. 49

John Tayl or, linguist on the faculty at South Dakota Sta te Uni vers ity,

in the course of his many encounters with errors in the themes of

inexperi enced writers. Simply defined, the 11Convergence effect .. means

that once a student 's motivation dec reases because of physical/mental

fatigue and/or carelessness, then that inexperienced wri ter wi ll

continually make all sorts of mistakes , and a good many·· of them wi ll

conve rge at the end of sentences, paragraphs, and themes. That is why

it is so necessary for the inexperienced wri ter to use a dictionary on

a continual basis, to proofread and edit work before the final copy is

wri tten up fo r class, and especial ly to be_gin themes wel l in advance

of their due dates. One writing and reading is just not enough time

for the inexperienced writer to correct convergent errors in phono-

. logy , morpho logy, semantics, and syntax. 50

APPENDIX

Metathesis:

I. hel ped him by working wi th him how to throw ge rnades.

The best friend ever to be had was right next door, usually because of no other reason than pure convienence.

In light of his expl aroti on he asks the people if this is what they really want and warns the people ·to think about what the pe ri sh is prayi ng for.

The women of this country must real ize that men are not cutting them down , when we disagree with bel ifes about the superwoman.

He states that he wo rks because of insticnt, an insticint present in every living being.

The customized shirt industry is big today . There is alot of adveristing invol ved.

l was excited for ton ight. Janmy invi ted me over to her house for a phesna te dinner.

The congregation was astounded by the mans actualizations, especially since their techingues of prayer has been criti sized.

He then claimed he was on herion and was going to blow their boss up whi le he was coked to the gils.

In the o 1 d days women were s upose to stay home and be bear foot pregnant and in the kitchen.

A person wi th a sincere tounge of voi ce, good eyes contact, and perhaps a smi le can take up other people's trust easily.

For example, when we are watching The Brady Bunch on tel evision, he gets so preturbed, �just dispi eses tha t program.

The ma in use of a Ruby Laser is in the field of ophthalomologi st .

...visu n is just paying attention too the comercials. They have a way of persuading somone in to impl use buying, fo r example when shopping in a store , and see a certian product and the little comercial jingl e comes to mind without even thinking pick up the product and plop, it goes right into the shopping cart .

Three years ago I had a qdi et pronounced wi eght prob1 em, I wi eghted 270 lbs. and had a wa ist an chest of 46 in. and 38 in. respecti vely. 51

APPENDIX ( continued)

In concul sion , I bel i eve that tel evi sion watching starts bad ma nners .

So I study, go home for a break, get my grades and my parnets say see we told you everything would work out.

Al so that the corpses never ful ly decompose but stay in the hideous state of partial decomposition and are fo rever giving of thei r pugnent odor. 52

CHAPTER 4

TIP OF THE TONGUE

The tip of the tongue phenomenon is an experience everyone has had at one time o·r anothe r when trying despera tely to reca 11 a word, name , place, or event. As Brown and McNei ll in their arti cle entitl ed

"The 'Tip of the Tongue • Phenomenon .. explain:

The 'tip of the tongue • (TOT) phenomenon is a state in which

one cannot quite recall a fami liar word but can recal l words

of similar form and meaning .•.. The recall of parts of wo rds

and · attri butes of words is termed •generic recal l ....• The features that fi gure in generi c recall may be entered in the

[mental] dictionary sooner than other features .... The

features favored by attention, especially the beginnings and

endings of wo rds , appear to carry more information than the

features - that are not favored, in particular the middles of

wo rds . (325)

I experienced a TOT state some time ago when trying to recal l the name of the younger daughter of some acquaintances of mine. The name iron repeatedly came to mind, and I spelled it backwa rd as Nori .

Somehow I remembered that I was supposed to reverse the letters , but still had no idea what the name wa s although I had the sensation that

I was getting closer. I also remembered that the child's name con­ tained two syl lables with the stress fa lling on the very fi rst 53

syl lable. I knew it was an unusua l name , one I had not heard before , and that I had used the mnemonic device, that of iron, to reca·ll the name. I began going through the alphabet, adding fi rst an [a], then a

[b] and so on to the word Nori but del eting the [N]. When I was nearing the end of the alphabet, [t] to be exact, a bel l went off in my head ( figuratively speaking) . I experienced a sensation of great rel ief from the frustrati on I had been feel ing. The littl e girl 's name is Tori . I wondered at fi rst how I ever came to associate the .. word iron with the name Tori and remembered that I wanted to retain the name when we were fi rst introduced, but in order to do that I tol d mysel f I had to have some memory aid to hel p me remember the unusual name . That's when I dev ised the method of reversing the letters· in her name because they resembl ed the word iron, from which I was suppo sed to delete the [N] and add the 1 etter [T]. Since that terrible ordeal with TOT , I have always remembered her name.

Anyone can experi ence the ti p of the tongue state at any time of the day or night. The only necessary catalyst is wanting to recal l something that is "forgotten" and having that word so near at hand that one can "almost taste it. .. The TOT state itsel f is analogous to an unresolved gestalt going on in one's brain. William James, author of The Principl es of Psychology, explained it very well when he noted that:

The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap

therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensel y

active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us 54

in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the

sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without

the longed-for term . If wrong names are proposed to us,

this singularly definite gap acts inmediately so as to

negate them. They do not fit. into its mould. And the gap

of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty

of content as both might seem necessari ly to be when

descri bed as gaps. (243)

This TOT state , then, is one in which our total time is consumed del i berately thinki ng about a specific word , and nothing el se can

di sturb us unti l that ecstatic moment when the correct wo rd surfaces and we feel a state of complete satisfaction. Our "gap" is fi lled wi th the ri ght wo rd and we can breathe a sigh of rel ief.

Students experi ence a somewhat similar state when writing

Freshman Composition themes. They recal l skeletons of words which

they want to use in thei r themes, but cannot remember the enti re wo rds. They always remember the first letter or letters , many times recall the 1 ast few 1 etters , but rarely reca 11 the mi ddl es of the words. This particular phenomenon is in complete agreement with A. R.

Jensen 's fi ndings. He wrote an article entitl ed "Spel ling Erro rs and the Serial-Position Effect," and as a prerequisite to such an article,

he analyzed thousands of spel ling errors from various grade level s

including middl e school , high school , and junior col lege. His data proved that his suspi cions were correct. Regardl ess of age level , students inadvertently remembered the beginnings of words to a very 55

great degree, the ends of words to a lesser extent, and the middles of

words almost never (106).

In addition to serial position of letters in words , it is also

· important to note that syl labl e stress plays a significant ro le in TOT

state . Brown and .McNeill 's study of syl labic stress revealed that 11 SS [similar sounding] words tended · to stress the same syl lable as the target words. ... We are 1 eft suspecting that S [a student] in a TOT

state has knowledge of the stress pattern of the target. .... C'The

'Tip of the Tongue • Phenomenon .. 330) . Moreover, they noted also that 11S [a student] in a positive TOT state has a significant ability to recall correctly the number of syl labl es in the word he is trying to

retri eve .. {329). Thi s stress pattern and syl labification similari ty,

in addition to the serial position effect that Jensen examines (106) ,

certainly corroborate strongly with the examples I analyzed below.

The first sentence reads as follows : They have a tenacy to embarrass their owners. /Tf n�s- i I is the word used instead of ;tind�nsi/. Thi s tip of the tongue error resembl es the target in number of syl labl es , initial and fi nal syl lables, and pri mary stress.

It is neither difficul t to understand the semantics nor to figure out

what the intended word is supposed to be. The ten and the S:1... are

identical to the target word tendency . Th is student· substi tuted an· a for the syllabl e den. The substituted � and the intended vowel e both

contain the schwa /a/ sound which occurs in unstressed syl lables.

This example, then , fits Jensen 's and Brown and McNe ill's paradigm 56

regarding a positive TOT state , namely, ini tial and final letter similarity, primary stress, and same number of syl lables.

In the next sentence, the student cannot qui te detennine the correct all ogra phs for a diml y-perceived morpheme. For exampl e, a football game takes appoximently three hours to compl ete.

/A pfks�mEntli/ can be classified as a tip of the tongue error beca use / it so close ly resembl es the target /1\ praks�matl i/. As this student proceeded through the lexical stage of the encoding process, his brain searched for a word with the meaning "almost" or 11nearly, .. one which was polysyl labic with the primary stress fal ling on the second one , and one wi th the first syl l ab1 e beginning with the vowe 1 a and the

1 ast sy l lab1 e ending in .!!l.· The wo rd approximate 1 y caul d not be accurately retrieved from storage and, consequently, this student settled on a word resembl ing it in structure , syl labification , stress, and sound. The letter r is del eted and the en is substi tuted fo r the vowel a. The wo rd has an incorrect 11mi ddl e" which fits the serial- position ordering on which Jensen elaborates and the same syllabifi­ cation and stress pattern which Brown and McNeill go to great length to explain in their article.

Bowi e Kuhn was selected to be convni ssioner of baseball on

August 13, 1969 when the owners of the twenty-four major league base­ bal l clubs unamiously agreed to offer Kuhn a seven year contract. In I this sentence the word /yun�mi�sli/ is substituted for the target / word /yun� nxrnasli/. Both error and target contain fi ve syl lables and the primary stress fal ls on the second one. The first and last 57

portions of both words are identical , namely, una and ously whereas the mi ddl e section of this polysyll abi c grapheme is erroneous. The student knew some vital information about the target word, such as meaning, number of syl lables, initial and fi nal segments , and where the primary stress fal ls, but could not recover the unstressed middle syl lable nim. The mis spelled · word was close enough to the correct one, nevertheless , to sati sfy this inexperienced wri ter.

Then there also wou ld be no matinence cost [on the car]. In I this sentence the wo rd /met�n�ns/ is the tip of the tongue word used / in place of ·the target /ment�ne»ns/ . In this phonetic transcription only the [n] is deleted. The erroneous grapheme matinence is di ffer­ ent than the actual wo rd ma intenance. The student searched fo r a three-syl labled word with the stress falling on the fi rst syl lable."

The first and last parts of the wo rd are recalled accurately, but the middle is somewhat muddl ed. It very wel l may be that this student did not HEAR the [n] in the first syl lable when the word was previously used in conve rsation; this is known as the nasalization phenomenon.

It also cou ld be the case that the [nt] was assimi l ated to [t] fo r ease in pronunciation. The [n] is a voiced nasal which is articul ated by· placing the tip of the to·ngue on the alveolar ridge and forcing ai r out through the nose. Simi larly, the [t] is a voi cel ess stop which is fanned by pl acing the tip of the tongue · on the alveolar ri dge, but instead of forcing the air out through the nose, it is al l owed to explode through the mouth when the tongue is moved away from the alveolar ridge . Beca use both sounds are made in the same place in the 58

mouth, when they are found together in the same word , one is likely to assimi late the two sounds . This assimi lation occurs because of consonant strength·. When n and t are juxta posed in a word, it is highly likely that the [n], which is of weak consonant strength, wi ll assimilate to just [t] . However, if the student had reanalyzed that mai ntenance is the · noun fo rm of the verb maintain, the student mi ght have been abl e to arri ve at the correct spel ling. Rather, this inexperienced writer rel ied on the sound of the word to the exclusion ·- of its deri vation. Because inexperienced writers rely heavily on the phonetics of wo rds and how the se words sound · in conversati on , they frequently mi sspell words.

The [Blacks] have no way to make money so they become prostotent. Because this student failed to recall the exact wo rd and specific letter-to-letter correspondences fo und in the word /pr/s�tut/ , he substituted the word /pr{stotant/ instead. Both words resemble each other in number of syl labl es , primary stress, initial and fi nal letters , and same form class . The target this student is aiming for is prostitute, but the closest he can come to the intended word is pro stotent. The semantics of the sentence is easily under­ stood, and the error can . be easily interpreted by an experienced reader altho ugh it is not so certain whether or not an inexperienced reader could understand and interpret the semantics. This inexperienced wri ter may have encountered the word prostitute in the course of his reading or duri ng a col l ege lecture .

This pol ysyl labic word is not part of the average student•s active 59

vocabulary . In his attempt to remember an unfami liar word and also to improve his theme wri ting, he settl ed on a word as close as possible to the target he sought. The ta r get, prostitute , has the identical fi rst syl lable pros as that of the erro r prostotent; in the second syl lable the intended l becomes an �; in the final syl lable the tute assumes the tent spelling. This is another case where the TOT state is an attempt by the inexperienced writer to reca 11 a vague1 y per­ cei ved pol ysyl labic wo rd which is not part of his active vocabulary.

In a sense, he hypercorrects by comi ng as c 1 ose to the target as possible.

Perhaps it is necessary here to tal k bri efly about targets and the perception of targets . Target, for the purpose of 1 i ngui stic analysis, means a goal or objective . When inexperi enced wri ters use polysyl labic words unfami liar to them, they endeavo r to reach a goal or achieve an objecti ve of writing those words correctly according to incomplete recall ; in effect, they ra rely hit the target or remember the word correctly, but wri te as close a representation to the target as they can recall or recreate. Their perception of thi s target is not always accurate because as Shaughnessy poi nts out about inexperi ­ enced wri ters: "[They are]. accustomed to seeing whole words rather than word partsu (174) , and as Jensen corroborates , "Spel ling erro rs occur more frequently in the middle of words, with fewest errors at the beginnings and end of ... wo rd [s ]" ( 106). As a result of these two factors , inexperienced writers frequently misspel l words which .are not fami liar to them. 60

The next example reads as fo llows : The marri age ended in

deforce� /Dif/rs; is the closest that this particular student can / come to the target /dtvors/ . There is a similari ty in the phonetic

spel ling although the graphemic transcription is somewha t varied. As

thi s student was writing the sentence and her brain wa s engaged in the

encoding process, the target word was approached but · the correct

spelling was not quite achieved. The similarities between the error

and the target are worth noting. Both words contain two syl lables ,

the stress fa lls on the second syl lable, and both words begin with /d/

and end wi th /rs/. The f is a voicel ess continua nt whereas the v is

voiced. Voi ced simply means the vocal cords vibrate as air fo rces its way through the throat to the mouth whereas voi eel ess phonemes are

articulated wi th no vibration of the vocal cords . Continuant means

the stream of air continues wi thout interruption by the tongue through

the mouth opening. The e of deforce instead of the i of divorce

results mainly because of speaking and heari ng idiosyncracies on the

part of the student. In speaking/li stening , this person may very well

have spoken or heard /i/ instead of /I/, and in wri ting she constructs words according to phonetic sounds. It is more likely, though, that

thi s inexperi enced writer has a strong tendency to analogize, re­

analyze, and thus, hypercorrect.

In another sentence the word distorted is unconsciously

wri tten as desterted. The on 1 y accurate evi de nee wou 1 d be in a few

newspapers but as time goes by it would be desterted again and again

unti 1 it was wo rse and more grotesque then befo re . This sentence, 61

first of all, is a run-on , and a comma is necessary to separate the two comp 1 ete thoughts in this compound sentence. A co11111a is a 1 so required after the wo rd !?l_ · in order to separate a dependent clause from the rnain c 1 a use. The adverb then is used instead of the con- juction than. Thi s error might be classified as a perseverati on because the word immediately preceding it is a pol ysyllabic word with the vowel [e] in it. Grotesque is a di ffi cult word fo r the average student to spel l correctly; and this particular student may have been concentrating efforts on the spelling, and as a result, missed the error in the word then. Moreover, this inexperienced wri ter seems to generalize, tha t is, hypercorrect--11 When in doubt, spell with an e .11 , The appa rent word /dEstArdad/ is substituted for the intended / word /d7stord�d/ . During encoding she was sea rching fo r a word meaning to misrepresent, containing three syl lables with the stress on the second one, and having the initial phoneme /d/ and the final endi ng [rted] . It is highly likely that the words evidence and grotesque infl uenced this student •s choice of [e] in the misspel ling.

There · are many simi l ari ties in the error and target, and as a resul t, this student writes a word that has simi lar beginning and . endi ng letters but contains an uncl ear· middl e section; in other words she

11Creates11 a 11 fuzzymorph. 11 It can be said, then, that TOT induces . hypercorrection which in turn poi nts to the fact tha t there are students who are more moti vated and/or less fatigued when wri ting themes. 62

Another example that fol lows is interesting to analyze because

of the way the misspel led word is transc ri bed. Etiology is the study

concerning with the knowl edge of· an unknown phanoman. In the fi rst

part of the sentence the student struggles between two phrases con­

cern ing the and concerned with ,. and ultimately combines the two into

concern ing · with . Thi s student probably expended so much monitoring

effort on etiology that she ran out of psychological gas at the end of

the sentence.

Phanoman is mistakenly wri tten fo r the word phenomenon. Thi s

student appears to have been searching fo r a word with the initial

1 etters .E.!!_ and the fi na 1 sound /;) n/. She was awa re that the word had

an unusual spelling �which is comparable to the Engl ish f and knew

there were nasals /m/ and /n/ sprinkl ed throughout the word. This

student was probably aware that the · word was marked [-English,

+Foreign, ?Greek, ?Latin, ?French]. Notice, however, that it is the middl e of this word of Greek origin that presents the most diffi culty.

The error contains only three syl lables whereas the correct word contains fo ur. · It is highly likely that this particular word is not

part of this student 's acti ve vocabulary, but it may have been .seen in print on occasion or heard by the student in the course of a conversa­

tion or col l ege lecture . As is the case with words that are not conJOOn to one's vocabulary, portions of the word and certain sounds are recalled but not the enti re word . This could wel l be another

"fuzzymorph." 63

In the 1 ast example on tip of the tongu e erro rs , there is a glaring erro r that illustrates often humo rous incongruity and apparently witty irony. Sure , I coul d of been anyone of these if I really wanted. However, who really wants to be a dumb old sol itudinari an anyway? An obvious error in the fi rst sentence of this example is the substituting of the preposition of fo r the modal auxiliary have. This confusion is the result of transcri bing in the manner by which we col loquially pronounce the contraction could•ve. /Salztud� (ri�n/ is substituted for the target /s�l ut�tdri�n/. It appea rs tha t this student was seeking sal utatorian, but only remem­ bered the fi rst and last parts of the noun , namely, /s�l ut/ and

/ri�n/. Not recall ing wha t the mi ddl e portion of the word wa s or where the primary stress occurred, she guessed at both and arri ved at an unusual deviati on. It may wel l be that thi.s student recalled some­ thing about the meaning of the wo rd , in parti cular, that this special person stands up in front alone on the stage to present an opening or welcoming address to the graduating cl ass. Concentrating more on the word alone than on the wo rd opening or welcoming, the student arri ved at the mi sspelled word. Thi s example illustrates vividly how TOT induces reanalysis and resul ts in an interesting hypercorrection.

This particular student was conscientious in her attempts to become an effecti ve writer. She even typed out her themes and there were seldom a great many egregious errors . On the contrary, she handed in themes which were grammatically correc t and interesting in styl e and choice of words. She is what might be called a more sophisticated wri ter who 64

Tip of the tongue phenomenon occurs mo re often than people are aware of because we do not always say or wri te exactly what we· think, especially when monitoring fo r errors. The initial and final letters of the target wo rd are generally recalled but the middl e remains unclear. This observation agrees perfectly with Jensen •s hypothesis that we memorize the beginnings of words as a rnatte r of course, sometimes retain the endings of words as well, but we rarely if ever recall the middl e portions because our attention is always focused on the initial and final sounds_ of wo rds (106), and this likewi se cor­ roborates with Brown and McNe ill •s findings that syl labifi cation and stress are important features of the TOT state (329-330).

Students who lack an extensive vocabulary and the ability to read beyond what is required of them experience great di ffi cul ty in composition courses where written material is essential to fulfilling the requirements of the course and a forma l pol ysyl labic vocabulary is necessary to be abl e to wri te interesting and expressive compositions.

In tip of the tongue state, inexperienced wri ters lose sight of the individual letter-to-sound correspondences and rely simply on their own versions of the words they wish to transcri be. Many times these students , in trying to recall a wo rd , remember the number of syl lables, where the primary stress fa l ls, usually the initial and fi nal sounds of the word , and generally the meaning of the word. These particul ar features are part of the stora ge technique of the brain when it files away words for future retri eval . Outside intrusions can also present themsel ves whi le the cnrnrH nn nrnrcc:c: ic: in nrnnrPC:C: . �nri thi c: in turn r� n rnn-f11cc tnc 65

writer. Reanalysis can thwart the correct spelling of a word if the fo nn being reanalyzed is an incorrect one. Assimi lation can alter spelling decreasing the number of syl lables in a word. Antici pation and perseverati on can also thwart the spel ling of a word by forcing premature closure on a gestalt. Al l these particulars contribute to the likelihood of error. It is the uni que, indeed pathological , individual who proceeds through the encoding process without any interruptions or interferences that may cause spel ling error. There are many externa 1 and i nterna1 - forces which act upon a person • s brain to cause it to err.

Stress and syllabi fi cation , in addition. to serial position of spelling, play important ro les in the inexperi enced writers • attempts to improve their wri ting skills. Shaughnessy observes that:

People who do littl e reading and wri ting are inevitably bad

spel lers , fo r wi thout constant experience with wri tten

wo rds , it is impos sible to absorb the sound-l etter

correspondence s that govern Engl ish spelling, to build a

memory for the looks and haptical feel of words , or to

become a closer observer of letters. ... [This] lack of

vi sua 1 acuity with words and · 1 etters , a habit of seeing

which swiftly transforms what is on the page to what is in the mi nd of the wri ter ...pr oduc[es] not simply a misspel ling

but a completely different word from the one the wri ter has

in mind. (172-1 73) 66

Therefore , it .i s necessa ry for inexperienced wri ters to take into account a number of different consi derations when they construct sentences, namely, the stress that occurs in words, the syl labifi­ cation of polysyllabic wo rds, and the "sound-l etter .. correspondences that are · so important in wri ting correctly�spelled words . If inexperienced wri ters assume res pons i bi 1 i ty for becoming better wri ters, they may discover the value that results when they consi der

11the sum of these expenditures, namely, the habit of noti cing, doubt­ ing, and thinking about the spel ling of words and the awareness that even misspellings yield to thought.. ( Shaughnessy 186). 67

APPENDIX

Tip of the tongue :

Presi dent Eisenhower was aminent about Nixon learning the duties of the Presi dent as wel l as Vice President.

I was twenty minutes late fo r my badmi tten class.

In this manner he is counterdicting himsel f. He stated that the Engl ish language is becoming more cl ustered with big words and yet its old wo rds are wo rn out.

Not many people consciencel essly realize the relation between an ordinary house cat and a lion or tiger.

Then I sta rted asking the hard questions, the why questions my mother coul d not always answer the questions, neighter could my father.

It was so much more exci ting to see and hear the attempted assination , than· just having our teacher report to our class how it happened.

If the younger age is expected to teach the younge r age this wi 11 result in a nonrespans ible generati on to come .

Fleeting, cho ppy body movements may betray a lie. If one has trouble controlling his jerky and undi sguished movements , he should practice lying in front of a mirror. He alone wa s abl e to complete this task and reveal the sacrel igion of the fi rst praye r.

Cloning of humans could change society durmaticly.

We are predesaned to what we do .

Through this second prayer, the aged stranger enucceated what the assembly was inevitably prayi ng fo r. If I sold my car there would be many things I could no longer take fo r gran it. As I view works by Harvey Dunn , the majority exceberate this sort of feeling.

Unfortuantly they also have a huge amount of liabiliti es . Not even Leonardo 's much afamed "Mona Lisa" could energize your emotions more while enl i ghtening .... 68

APPENDIX (continued)

One of the people that came to visit the gra ve was the mi sterous lady in black.

In Eagle Butte there is almost · as much exi s tment as there is in a ghosttown.

Since the law will not be able to incarsate the killers.

The main drug -is marijuana is PCD which is a drug that vetinari ans use to .

I know how to suck down drink apound drink.

We should as christians· pray fo r hope and an end to war, not through distruction but through talks _and negations. They a 1 so can be used much more easily and more effi cantly than the conventional methods now being used.

Basketball, however is a mi lder sport, although some fights are prdsable.

It requi red years to synchorize the organization with the efficiency it had to ma ke the cheap pri ce of the Model T possible.

The conditions fl exuate day to day.

This stranger showed the truth so vi vantly that it was a shock to us to see how a prayer is subseptabl e to be mi s�l eadi ng unl ess examined in full.

I like to receive letters expectally from my friends . 69

CHAPTER 5

MALAPROPISMS

A malaprop ism is "a ridi cul ous mi suse of a word, in place of one it resembl es in sound, especially when the speaker is seeking a more elevated or technical style than is his wont and the blunder destroys the intended effect" (Hockett 110). Many malapropisms are humorous in their semantic context because they are so unl ike the · intended word in denotation.- Cutl er and Fay, in their article "One

Mental Lexicon, Phonological ly Arranged : Comments on Hurford 's

Comments , " hypothesize that "a rnala propi sm ari ses when the 1 anguage production device selects , instead of the intended word, its nearest neighbor in the lexicon" (1 07 ). Many 1 ingui sts concur with the fdea that the brain has a storage system much like a computeri zed dic­ tionary/file cabinet combination . Words and portions of words are stored in a highly sophisticated manner and are easily retrieved when the correct "address" is given (Cutl er and Fay 111). These authors explain clearly what an "address" is and how a malapropism originates:

This address is an n-place expression in which each place

can have m poss i b 1 e va 1 ues (where m equa 1 s perhaps the

number of phonemes in Engl ish) .... The address is not

a rbi tra ry , but is instead a di rect function of the phono­

logical structure of the wo rd . Ma lapropisms arise when the

production device makes a mi stake in reading off the address

and proceeds to an erroneous location. ( 111 ) 70

In essence, they say that the brain is a very complex organ which has a rel atively fi xed but highly sophisticated method of retrieving

information when it is needed.

Donald A. Nonnan, . in his article entitl ed "Categori zation of

Action Slips," notes that the use of one word when anothe r is intended has:

Several contributing �auses, with the actual word selecti on

being infl uenced by a combination of syntactical considera­

tions, meaning, and phonological selection from the set of

possible words, as wel l as by activation of underlyi ng

moti ves and plans. {2-3)

He attempts to confirm as rel evant what Freud clearly bel i eved was the dominant reason why peopl e use the "wrong" word for an intended wo rd, and Norman also attempted to correlate linguistic reasons wi th Freud 's psychological assumptions. Freud bel i eved that there are "'wanderi ng' speech ima.ges which 1 ie below the threshold of consciousness and are not intended to be spoken ..." ( "Sl ips of the Tongue" 49).

These "wanderi ng images" are comparable to references made earl ier concerning intruding, competing, or interferi ng gestalts which attract the attention of the wri ter 's brain to such a large extent that they directly infl uence the output. It is as Norman contends

•r [that] a complete error theory seems 1 i kely to requi re autonoroous subconscious processing, with intentions, past habits, thoughts , and memories all playing some role in corrupting the intended behavi or" 71

(2). - He fel t that Freud •s insights were val uable but not necessari ly

a complete model of unconsciously made ·errors.

Freshmen are prone to using malapropisms in thei r wri tten

assignments , _ and these 11Sl i ps11 may- be Freudian and/or phonological

malfunctions . A look at the first exampl e, however, bears out Fay and

Cutl er•s contention that there are generally three .. interesting

properties .. associated wi th malapropisms . 11 Fi rst, the target and

error are of the same grarnnatical category in 99% of the cases.

Second , the target and the erro r frequently have the same number of

syl lables {87% ••• ) . Third, they almost always have the same stress

pattern (98% •••)1 1 (11Malaprop.:i sms and the Structure of the Me ntal

Lexi con .. 507-508). The sentence reads as follows: The child•s skin / is soft and subtle. The word /sAtal / is spelled correctly as it � stands , but the student means- /SI\p�l/; therefo re, this is - a case of

mistaken identity. The student searched for a word in the memory bank with two syl lables , with initial consonant �' and final ending �· If

one were looking for onl y these three similarities, either word would

be suitable. The distinguishing characteristic, however, is that each

word means something entirel y different- from the other. Subtle means clever, crafty , or sly whereas suppl e means flexible or resiliant. It is obvious whi ch word is the intended one. The [b] of subtle is a

voi ced labial and the [p] of suppl e is voiceless. It may wel l be that because the feature of articul ation is identical , the student mistook

the voiced quality for the voiceless. This may have been ai_ded by the fact that the fl of subtle is a silent letter, although marked as 72

vo iceless in articulation. Subtle does fit Fay and Cutl er's paradigm of mal apropisms beca use it and the target suppl e are the same syntax, have the same number of syl lables, and share the same stress pattern .

The amusing error in the next sentence results from the person 's inability to differentiate between 11domestic fowl .. and

11 tri fl ing or insignifi cant ... On the other hand, the AFL would bri ng a I poultry 1,300 ,000 to their stadiums . /Poltri./ is mi stakenly wri tten for the word /p:l tri I. The stress in both words fa 11 s on the fi rst syl lable and both wo rds contain two syl lables. The significant difference, howeve r, lies in the vowel sound in the first part of the word . In poultry, the [ou] has · the long vowel sound /o/ whereas in pa ltry, the [a ] has the /a/ sound. It is a good probability that this student heard the target word in conversation or saw it· in pri nt.

Paltry is not a word found in the average student 's active vocabulary.

Poul try, on the other hand, is a. corrmonly-occurri ng word he·re in

Midwest fanmi ng communities and suggests connotatively, a large

"flock, .. hence, a large numbe r or indistinguishable mas s. The con­ fusion res ults because of phonol ogy and pronunciation as wel l as semantic context . The next example might very wel l fit Freud 's analysis of an unconscious slip with psychological undertones. I hope I can get some I descent grades ·. /D�sfnt/ and the intended word /disant/ are phoneti- cally different. First of all, the stress is placed on di fferent syl lables. In the error descent, the accent fal ls on the second syl l ab 1 e whereas in the target decent, the accent is p 1 aced on the 73

fi rst part of the word . Mo reover, the stress pattern changes the �of the fi rst syl l ab1 e to /iI in the word decent and /;J 1 in the word descent. Likewi se, the e sound in the second syl lable is changed to

!d / in decent and /e./ in descent. This student was not relyi ng on letter-to-letter or letter�to-sound correspondences , but rather on the appearance of the · whole wo rd as a unit. Both the error and the intended word are very similar on fi rst glance; the only apparent difference appears to be the sc of descent vers us the c of decent.

The phon eme /s/ can assume many . different all ographs in words , namely,

_E!, ss, £_, sc, and �; therefore , it is a phoneme whi ch may cause spel ling confusion for the ave·rage student .

In spite of this. al l ographic confusion, Freud still might have analyzed the error· in such a way as to hypothesize that there were certain outside infl uences or unconscious "images .. interferi ng with the correct spel ling. He might have conj ectured that this parti cular student was awa re perha ps of fa i ling grades, but was hoping upon hope that they wou ld be pas sing. The outside infl uence or "unconscious image, .. then, were the low grades being achieved by the student. It very wel l may be a Freudian sl ip, but one cannot make such assumptions primarily on such a shallow basis. On the contrary , . it is more sound to look at the phonology , stress pattern , and articulation di fferences in order to arrive at other conclusions concerning the source of error. In the fo llowing example there is some humor associated with this malapropism because of the semantic confusion of the two words , 74

namely, one meaning chief executive and the other denoting priority .

11The Brethren.. - It wa s kind of amaz ing what the Supreme Court

Justices could and were getting away with, and these peopl e were setting pr esidents fo r later cases and laws. In this sentence the · student uses two auxi 1 i a ry verbs caul d and were , but uses on 1 y one form of the verb get , namely, getting. The student is condensing the sentence by using only one form when , in fact, the student snould be wri ting coul d get and we re getting. I I The word /pr£zad�ns/ as opposed to ·the target /pr£S�d�ns/ has the voiced /z/ instead of the voiceless /s/. Phonetical ly both wo rds resembl e each other except fa r this one feature of voice. The word presidents is a much mo re common vocabulary word used in conversation and seen in print than the word precedence. Because of the un­ fami 1 a ri ty with the wo rd precedence , this inexperienced wri ter re 1 i ed more on similarity of sound , stress , and syl labification. Refe rri ng to Ladefoged •s remarks to Fromkin in an earl ier chapter, he states that /s/ and /z/ are 11 hissi ng11 sounds and very difficult to di ffer­ entiate between, especial ly when they occur in the middl e portion of a wo rd (Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence 228) . In this part icular case the s of pres idents is given the vo iced /z/ whereas the c •s of precedence are given the voicel ess /s/. The all ophone distinction s in bo th cases may have added to the confusion . It should be noted further that semantics also may have added to the confusion. The word presi dents is marked [+power, +persuasion , +high rank, +authority ,

+worl d known]. These qua 1 i ties may very we 11 have intruded on thi s 75

student's error causing him to write the wo rd with the stro nge r connotation.

The next mal apropism replaces the intended word, which is an adjective, by a past tense verb. It is conrnon knowl edge that past tense verbs and past participles are regularly leveled and that past parti ciples function as adjectives, but in this specific case the error is particularly interesting because of the change of meaning associated wi th it. Stuck-up peopl e are cal led conceded peopl e. The neutral ization of /t/ and /d/ in these two particular words causes . / I this student to write /kansi d3d/ as /k�nsit�d/ . Phonetically, there is a considerable likeness between both words. Moreover, the error and the target both contain three syl lables and have the stress fal ling on the second syl lable. The difference between conceded and concei ted is that one means to acknowl edge defeat and the other means vain or exaggerated. The e of conceded and the ei of concei ted both have the tense vowel sound /i/. In addi tion , there is a certai n amount of confusion caused by· the voiceless /t/ and the voiced /d/ .

In certain wo rds the d has a /t/ sound , which is known as the Flap

/d/ , and some examples are dripped, kissed, kicked , and stuffed .

Because they end in ed but have the /t/ sound, the student may have trouble differentiating between the two sounds /d/ and /t/ because the

Flap /d/ neutralizes the voi ced/voiceless di stinction . The wo rd conceited is diffi cult fo r the average student to comni t to memo ry because of the way it sounds versus the way it is wri tten. It is 76

another one of those "i before e except after C 11 cases that thi s student failed to remember.

Freud would have had a successful time analyzing this next

malapropi sm because of the underlying connotations connected with it.

Intermarriage is just on e person marri ng another. This student

unconsciously substi tuted the word ;mtri�/ fo r the intended one / /m� ril: �/. On sight , the grap hemes marri ng and marryi ng are quite similar beca use only the � is omi tted, but on closer inspection , they

are quite di ss imilar phonol ogically. Marri ng has two syl lables

whereas rnarr yi. ng has three , and the vowe 1 of the erroneous word is

pronounced /a/ whe r eas the vowel of the intended word sounds like

1� 1. Mo reover, the denotations fo r both words are qui te di fferent.

Ma rri ng means spoiling, ·damaging, or disfi gu.ring and marryi ng means

uniting or joining in wedlock . It must also be taken into considera­

tion that this error may be a pen skip. Sometimes in the haste of wri ting down thoughts, peopl e skip or omi t certain phonemes. The wo rd mar has a single consonant �in the present tense, but when one wri tes

it in the present progressive, the consonant r must be doubl ed before adding the infl ection {-�} . Marry, however, ends wi th the phoneme

/i/, and in order to change it to present progressive, one simply adds

{-�} to the end of the wo rd . Both wo rds share mo re resemblances to each other when they are wri tten in the present progressive. Freud might have hypothesi zed that this student had a negati ve view of marriage , and as a resul t of this unconscious interference, the psyche affected the student 's wri ti ng performance . 77

This next sentence, however, does not contain an erro r due to

connotation but one of forei gn · derivation . The po ignant drug put the

child to sleep quickly. In this particular example the student writes

the wo rd � ���nt/ instead of the intended word /p�t�nt/ . Both words are two syl lables long and the stress fa l ls on the first part of each wo rd . It is interesting to note that po ignant is a French word whereas po tent has a Latin origin, a distinction that a student woul d col lapse into marking as [+Foreign]. The former means sharp , biting, or penetrating whereas the latter means effecti ve or powerfu l in action. When semantically analyzing the words , often one can readtly determine which word was intended , but the problem · is one of phonology as wel l as se mantics. The �becomes /�y/ and because of the signi­ fi cance of that sound, the a in the second syl labl e assumes a /y� / sound. In the word po tent, the � has the 1 ong vowe 1 sound of I o/ and the e has the schwa or /� I sound because the second syl l ab·l e is unstressed . The wo rd po ignant is not part of the average student • s acti ve vocabulary, so it must be assumed that thi s student saw the wo rd in print (because of its correct spelling) . It might be ra ther easy just to classify ma lapropisms as the result of tip of the tongue states ; but, in the case of TOT words , they are always misspell ed .

However, ma lapropisms are correctly-spel led words , but their semantic context differs from that of the intended word�

The next example reads : Babies wetting thei r· pants are discussing. The word /dis�%�/ replaces the intended word 78

I /disgAstx a/. These two words have simi lar sounds , but have entirely di fferent meanings. Discussing refe rs to speaking about something in a del i berati ve man ner whereas disgusti ng means a sickening distaste or dislike. In these two wo rds the /k/ and /g/ phonemes are the point of confusion, along wi th the omi ssion of the t in the er roneous wo rd .

The /k/ is voi cel ess whereas /g/ is voiced. Both are velar stops wh ich means the .. airstream is stopped by the back of the tongue making a complete closure wi th the vel um11 (Fromkin and Rodman 72) . These two consonants are confusing because they are fo rmed in the same part of the mouth, namely, at the velum. The only outstanding feature is that one makes the vocal cords vibrate during articul ation (the �) and the other does not (the �) . Likewi se, the /s/ and the /t/ are fa nned in the same part of the mouth . The s is formed by placing the tongue loosely against the alveol ar ridge and pushing air out between the tongue and ridge . The t is made by placing the tongue fi rmly against the alveol ar ridge and the air is stopped completely in the oral cavity for a brief period before it is expel led. Therefore, a person pronounci ng the st of disgusting has simply to push the tongue fi nnly against the alveolar ridge when going from the articulated /s/ to the

It/. Because of the simila ri ty between features of articulation for the /g/ and /k/ as we ll as the /s/ and /t/ , together with the close resembl ance the error and the intended wo rd share , this student had di ffi cul ty diffe rentiati ng between which spelling word should be use d.

Both wo rds woul d be common , that is, .. unmarked, 11 in the average student 's acti ve vocabulary. 79

It shoul d be noted here that markedness is that feature

whereby a word is 11 l abeled11 as difficult/fo reign or unmarked as

easy/fami l iar. These ma rked features of a word are determined by

inexperienced wri ters as they observe polysyl labic structure as wel l

as phonological and morphologi cal components. This is a me ans whereby

inexperi enced writers determine whether or not a word is within thei r

power of spelling.

This la st malapropism is a source of amusement be cause the

meaning of the error is so far-fetched as · to be downri ght silly.

Inductive reasoning is from the pa cific to the general . The word � / /pasZf;J k/ is a semantic. erro r replacing /spas;rf� k/ . Pacific means mild, calm, or tanquil whereas specific means definite or precise.

Phonetically, both words share a great resembl ance , and the only di fference is· tha t the [s] is omi tted from the erroneous word. Both

have three syl lables and the stress fa lls on the second one. Ortho­ graphically, however, pac ific and speci fic are quite different. The initial sy l labl e of the erro r is � and of the intended word �·

Ladefoged contends that the sibi lant /s/ is a very loud 11 hissing11 sound, and its noi se presents prob1 ems as to where the phoneme is located in some words (Spe ech Erro rs as Linguistic Evidence 228).

Compound this problem wi th the fa ct that the intended word has two /s/ sounds represented by two different all ophones, namely, � and �' and confusion is bound to prevail . The sibilant [s] is formed by placi ng the tongue loosely against the alveolar ridge and pushing air out between the tongue and ri dge . The [p] is fo rmed by placing both lips 80

together and fo rcing air out between them. The [s], then , is an alveolar fricative and the [p] a bilabial stop. It is much easier to go from a /p/ to an /s/ than it is from an /s/ to a /p/ to another

Is/. Such is the case with the words pa c ific and specific. This student may have confused the location of the sibilant while simul­ taneously opting for an easier pronunciation. In speech as wel l as in the wri tten word , the brain functi.ons in much the same way. The only di fference between the two is that in speaking, the arti culatory organs voice the words and in wri ting the motor operations of the ann, wrist, and hand transcri be the wo rds .

Ma 1 a pro pi sms are an unusua 1 category of spel ling "error" because they are speci fi cally involved wi th the sem antic stage of the encoding process. The erro rs , as such, are not actual ly mi sspelled words , but are erroneously substituted words that usual ly have similar appearances to the intended words . As Fay and Cutler bel ieve, there are:

Three major characteristi cs of �alapropisms : Fi rst, the

erroneous intrusion is a real word--not the intended word ,

of course, but not a meaningl ess string of phonemes either.

Second, the target and erro r seem to be unrelated in

meaning. Fi na l ly, there is · a close rel ation between the

pronunciation of the ta rget and the pronunciation of the

error. (505) 81

Furthermore , in many instances the beginnings and endings of the two

wo rds are identical and only one or two phonemes differ. This is the

only classification of errors that has a predominantly humorous touch,

and the humor stems from the fact that the meanings are so outrageous­

ly di fferent.

Freud 's contributions are signifi cant even though they tend to

be one-sided. There very wel l may be psychol ogical interferences

which act as unconscious intrusions into the spoken and wri tten word

of humans. After a 11 , humans cannot detach themsel ves from thei r

emotions every time they wish to engage in speaki ng or writing

acti viti es , even if they wanted to . Outside intrusions do play a

significant ro le in speaking and wri ting, but it is unfair and wholly

unjustified to examine onl y the psychological aspects of errors wi thout considering the phonol ogical , morphological , lexical ,

syntactical , and semantic areas as wel l. The fact that. there are significant simi l ari ties between malapro pisms and the intended wo rds

is al l the more reason wh y emphas is should be placed equal ly on the linguistic analysis.

In addition , the strong theory of· malapropisms seems to focus on meani ng-- it is ultimately a semantically-based phenomenon with only seconda ry phenomena invol ving phonol ogy ; the weak theory is that phonological confusion from similari ty of ar ticulati on causes the

11misuse11 of se mantic meaning. Fo r example, in the sentence: Some parents think their chil dren are prodigious, the student has the correct meaning in mind. This inexperienced wri ter, however, 82

reanalyzed the wo rd prodigy by me ans of analogizing. The student

means unusually tal ented , but prodigy is a noun and thi s student

syntactically needs an adjecti ve. Therefore , he takes the noun

prodigyand adds the morpheme {-ious} in order to obtain the adjective

fo rm , never real izing that he is, in fact, changing the meaning of the

intended word . What results , therefore, is a word similar in

articulation to the intended wo rd , but unl ike it compl etely in

semantics.

The test cases above seem to focus on whether or not the

examples are funny, witty , or outrageously incongruous. This pheno­

menon, as humor, may be rel ated to punning then, and as Hockett

di sti nguishes : "an exact pun is a stretch of speech of a detenninate

phonemic structure which is susceptible of two or more inter­

pretations" ("Where the Tongue Sl ips, There Sl ips I" 113). However, puns are del i berate whereas ma lapropisms are unconscious deviations which occur because they are similar to the intended wo rds in

structure , stress, and sound but unl ike them in meaning. Furthermo re ,

inexperi enced wri ters oftentimes 1 ack the abi 1 i ty to di fferentiate

between pol ysyl labi c wo rds which are similar in phonology because these students are unaccustomed to using these words in their acti ve vocabularies. 83

APPENDIX Mal apropi sms :

As though to expand these new jazz r�thems , the costumes of the Twenties , basically unfi tted triang es , were decorated with embroidery, fl ounces , and deep fringes desi gned to reverberate each motion of the body .

Ma n has made a great stri de in a fi ght · against this force of nature , but is barel y holding his own . More research, money , time and knowl ­ edge must be expanded before the enti re study of flood preventation can be brought under control .

The fl owar are standing at at tention as young men with thei r colorful faces and amazingly bl ue unifo rms stand out in the mi sts of the exci temen t.

The woman 's indol ence at the funeral seemed natural .

Some parents think their chil dren are prodigious.

Television has installed in me a fear that wi ll take yea rs , if ever, to overcome .

Some of the disadvantages of findi ng out that another planet is inhib ited by human like beings would be that not only would the planet earth ha ve wars between the countries but the whole planet would have to organize a militia to protect earth from a Martian attack.

El usive means a mental �·

The kille r wa s wel ding a kni fe .

People commit on how big she is.

We 're both bespec kled.

This in a sorted way is like when the young boy was going to Church.

Life usually starts with the combing of male and female sex cells.

The 3 pri soners we re indicated for the killings. No book has infiltra ted me more.

The lady was a littl e on the pl umb side.

The female sex-role defines woman by her sexual function of child­ bearing and mut tering instints . 84

APPENDIX (continued)

There wa s a lot of chance & luck that one you see, beca use with out the con struction our fami ly would not be able to have , do or emotionally nature the peopl e within it.

Her job entitl es a number of duties.

After a few months that relationship came to a subtle hal t and I went from "cloud nine .. to about sea l evel fo r some time.

By eating good meal s one gets his body al ready to do some serious pa rting.

Al though this is not the only way to exceed in this career, you can go to a trade school or th� armed fo rces.

I fe el this way because Castro appears to me as somewhat of an egotistic who survi ves on conquest and power.

Thoreau went to the woods del i berati vel{, so that he would not fi nd out, after he had died, that he had not ived life to its ful lest. 85

CHAPTER 6

CONVERGENCE

For the basic wri ting student , academi c wri ting is a trap,

not a way of saying someth ing to someone. The spoken

language , looping back and fo rth between speakers , offering

chances fo r groping and backi ng up and even hiding, leaving

room fo r the 1 anguage of hands and faces , of pi tc h and pauses , is generous and invi ting. Next to this rich orche­

stration, writing is but a line that mo ves hal tingly across

the page , exposing as it goes a 11 that the wri ter doesn • t

know , then passing .into the hands of a stranger who reads it

with a lawyer's eyes , searching for fl aws . (Shaughnessy 7)

This one paragraph says it all . Inexperienced wri ters are jostl ed back and fo rth between being able to express themselves unmi stakably in words ·with gestures and inton ations and having to express them­ sel ves orthographically in fi ve -hundred-word themes in the col l ege atmosphere . Many col l ege freshmen are just such inexperienced writers wi th little sense of how to express themsel ves logically, coherently, and meaningful ly on paper. They are simply · creatures of speech who have very little practice in the formal wri tten word.

Up to this poi nt, the chapters have concentrated specifically on certain categories of errors . In this chapter there are sentences with multiple errors that range from rule incompetence, reanalysis, 86

and phoneme confusion to suffi x chunking , anticipation/perseveration

substitution , and tip of the tongue state ( TOT ) . It is a potpo urri of

phonological , mo rphological , syntactic, and semantic errors . It is

simply an attempt to expose the reader to a variety of erro rs which

occur within the framework of basic writing compositions and to

analyze closely what the wri ters intend to wri te and what they

actual ly write. This convergence effect, as it is cal led, is notice­

abl e in student. writing because mo tivation may slacken towa rd the end

of the wri ting, coupled with the fa ct that the student may be physi­

cal ly and/or mentally tired. This motivati on lapse and/or tiredness

causes the student to ma ke erro rs not only throughout the theme , but

roore speci fica lly at the ends of se ntences and paragraphs. The

student surrenders , so to speak, to those condi tions which affl ict

many col l ege fr eshmen. They bel i eve that wri ting courses which are

required as part of the curri cul um are 11Slough11 courses or ones which

are to be taken very lightly. As a resul t of this phil osophy, many

students wri te assigned themes the day, night, or roo rning before the

wo rk is actually due. A look at the first example demonstrates the

convergence effect.

In thi s first exampl e , there is not only confusion between

wh ich fo rm of indefinite articl e to use but also doubt about the

spe 11 i ng of a wo rd uncolllllon to the average freshman. I wish I caul d get into an lucrati ve sceam. The indefi nite article � an is used

indiscrimi nately by many students because they partially learned

or never took the time to compl etely ma ster the rul e that states : the 87

article � is used when the wo rd fol lowing it begins with a consonant

and an is used when the wo rd fol lowing it begins with a vowel . This

error may also be induced by the perseveration invol ving the prep­

osition into. Part of a speaker• s/wri ter• s success depends on that

person 's ability to use the correct preposition before certain

adjectives and nouns. Th is femal e student uses two Latinate words ,

namely, lucrative and scheme. She may be trying to impress the reader

with her large vocabulary. She may .well be uncertain about the

preposition that precedes these words and finally settles on into. As

the motor apparatus of her hand wri tes the sentence, her mi nd · may

still be concentrating heavily on the correct preposition . As a

resul t of this dua l action, she inadvertently wri tes an instead of �,

perseverating on the letter �of into .

/Skim/ is not in the average student•s acti ve vocabulary and

its spel ling remains unclear. She may be analogizing in the fo rm of

reanalysis . She remembers that scream has the sa me sound as scheme , minus the r. Thus , she detennines that since both words are very

simi lar in sound, they must also be similar in spel ling . She arrives

at sceam by adding {-earn} to the initial letters sc. This inexperienced wri ter may not have had to wo-rry before about wh ich fo rm of the indefinite article to use because she always managed to express hersel f clearly in speech . The hearer invariably understood what wa s . said and easily overl ooked any erro rs that resulted. Now there is a distinct need to know not only what is said but also how to spel l it correctly in order to get the message across 88

from writer to reader. Moreover, sp eaking words phonetically is always simpler and clearer than having to fi gure out which prefix or suffix to add or what set of graphemes represents a certain sound in wri tten exposition . Al l of a sudden one encounters a whole new set of rul es and spel lings which must be recalled in order to get the meaning across . This is exactly the case in the next sentence which deals wi th all omorph confusion.

I have cho sen Pacific Uni versity in Oregon as a fi rst choi3e " and ICO seco und. /C�ys/ is a mo rpheme and the /s/ is a phoneme which has a 1 tern ate fo rms known as a 11ogr aphs. Al l ographs are different

v lette rs which represent the same sound. In the wo rd · /c:lys/ the phoneme /s/ can be represented in a number of different ways, namely,

' �, �' �' st, or �· It is confusing when words have the /s/ sound but use another letter or letters to represent that sound. This student may be fa miliar wi th the phonetic transcripti on from looking in the dictionary, or she may be reanalyzing from the word chosen which appears earl ier in the sentence. Since chosen is a ve rb form and she wants the noun form, sh e realizes that certain changes have to be made. She may know that choice is the noun she wants, but per­ severates the s of chosen when - wri ting the word. She may also have decided on the /s/ sound because it is such a prominent fo rmant in the word and the ce never occurred to her. . I The wo rd /s£kand/ is pronounced as though the sec ond vowel is an /� / or a u. The sc hwa re places the vowel sound in unstressed syl lables and the sound becomes mo re of an uh sound. Since this sound 89

/d / is so pronounced , this student may have suffix chun ked the {-und}

onto the end of the wo rd . She was aware that an· � is part of the wo rd

and proceeds to pl ace the o before the suffi x ending {-und}.

It is obvious from thi s particular sentence that there are a

great many functions which must be performed before she can express

hersel f orthogra phical ly. Rul es must be remembered, phoneti c versus

actual spel lings have to be recalled, and correct suffixes and pre­

fixes have to be retained. With attention focused on phonology , morpho 1 ogy , semantics, and syntax, this student had some di ffi cul ty

. expressing hersel f in a correct manner. Because thi s encoding process is ongoing, inexperienced wri ters have di fficul ty wri ting the correct

sentences because their backgrounds are weak in grai11Tlar and syntax.

It shoul d be noted that the errors come at the end of the sentence.

The process taxes the monitoring function. Another inexperienced

writer makes mi stakes in phonology , morphology, and syntax because his

attention is focused on an emotional subject.

Al though meant have had to do these things fo r a lot longer,

things have getten even to ugher fo r him since the womens movemen t.

The fi rst error noted in the sentence above is the wo rd /mEn/ spel led

meant. It is generally known that the brain is a complex storage fi le

in which wo rds , syl lables , segments , and phonemes are stored. It is

likely that one portion of storage consists of suffi xes. In the error

above, this student may have been thinking in two di rections, namely, what to say next and how to spel l men . Because this was an in-class

exercise with students responding to the "superwoman my th, " he may 90

have fel t pressed for time. In the exci tement of getting some thoughts down on paper, he pul led out meant instead of men . Both words have the same vowel sound /E/ , and he confused the preteri te of the verb �with the plural form of the noun man . In addi tion , it is conceivable that this student anticipated the word movement which appears at the very end of the sentence. He obviously "means" what he says and feels very strongly about the "movement ...

In the second error, the student uses the verb getten instead of the perfect tense verb gotten. He attempted to choose between the present perfect have been getti ng and the perfect have gotten . This inexperienced wri ter was undecided about which tense· to use and resorted to a bl end of both tenses , namely, have getten. Another possibi lity for the error could be anticipation . Fromkin states in her book entitled Speech Errors as L i ngu i sti c Evi dence th at when a person speaks/writes , the encoding process is a 1 ready several words ahead in the sentence in antici pation of what is to fo l low (43}.

Since the word women presents spel ling difficulty both in its singular and plural forms , this student may have been concentrating heavi ly on that portion of the sentence and it was anticipated as early as the verb gotten , in which case the student inadvertently wrote /E/ instead of /:J/ . Fromkin also notes that the incidence is higher for anti ci­ pation in a sentence when the words that fol low have the · same sound or letter w tthin them ( "The Non-Anoma lous Nature of Anomal ous Utterances11

30). In this case the 1 etter e occurs seven mo re times after the error in the words even , tougher, since , womens , and movement. 91

Another error that occurs within this sentence is the lack of the pl ural pronoun them to agree with the plural subject men . The confusion concerning the spelling of men may have interfered with this student • s remembering to make a 11 pronouns agree with thei r p 1 ura 1 antecedents.

The last error in thi s sentence is the student's omi ssion of an apostrophe to denote possessive case . Women 's should have the apostrophe between the _!! and � because women is al ready plural . There seems to be a genera 1 tendency w-ith inexperienced writers to de 1 ete apostrophes in their wri ting. Th is may stem from the fact that students unaccustomed to forma 1 writing tend to omit punctuation because there is no need for it in the spoken word . The student may also feel that as long as the wo rds are written out and a sentence is fo rmed, the reader wi ll understand the message without any diacritical marks.

Thi s particular student's theme was written out in longhand and the writing exerci se took place in class. The topic being dis­ cussed is a highly emotional one fo r both women and men . This writer was troubled with spelling, verb tense , pronoun. agreement , and punctuation . He obviously feels emotionally invol ved in the woman 's movement because his masculin ity and power structure are threatened.

Emotions are outside elements that interfere with the correct format of the wri tten word. A Freudian might analyze his erro rs as negati ve feedback about the modern woman 's acquisition of freedom , power, and success. Whether or not these outside influences affected the way 92

this student wrote is. a matter of conjecture . We do know, however, that the pressure of wri ting something meaningful within a certa in amount of time can be a source of anxiety for the inexperienced writer.

This next example was not written in class as the previous sentence was, but it exhibits some unusual phonological substitutions that are . baffl ing. Hundreds of th ousands wi 11 ·die in infancy from malnutrition ; mi llions of others will survive but will be limited in their phys ical and. mental capasilities, because of the del ilitating effects of severe malnutrition in or at infancy. The two word s· / / /kep�sl:latiz/ and /d�lrlateti!)/ are unusually misspel led. An s is substituted fo r the � in capabilities and an l replaces the b of debilitating. The s contains the features : [+continuant, +sibilant, and +alveolar] whereas the � is [-continuant, +voiced, and +labial ]. The l contains quite a few mo re features than the other two sounds put together, namel y, [+sonorant, +continuant, +voi ced, +l iquid,

+l aterial , and +al veol ar]. Since the s and b have no similar features . on which one can attach any correspondence , it is necessary to look elsewhere for a solution. The 1 and b share one feature in conmon, that of vo icing. The sibilant � has a strong hissing noise which makes it a di fficult sound to pl ace within words (Ladefoged ·in Fromkin

" 288). The sentence itself contains fifteen /s/, /z/, or /s/ sounds , nine before the wo rd capabilities and six fo llowing it. Beca use of the frequency of thi s parti cular phoneme , the student may be per­ severating the previous sib ilant sounds . She may also be fus ing two 93

wo rds , namely, capacities and capabi lities, in which case capasilities

is the likely outcome . She may have been wrestl ing with a choi ce

between these two words and unconsciously b 1 ended them to arrive at the .. new" word.

Debi litating is likewi se mi sspel led. It is very probable that

this student· perseverated the ! because there are thirteen of them

contained in preceding words . This particular example was wri tten out

in longhand, and the effect of writing that many tal l loops is that

anothe r word will be perseverated. The land the .Q_, besides having

the feature of voicing in conmon , are also shaped simi l arly, which contri butes to the likel ihood of error.

Both misspel led words occur near the end of this unusual ly

long sentence. At the beginning of this sentence, the concentration

level of the student is at a high peak because of the attention that

must be given to so many processes , namely, correct spel ling, proper

punctuation, complete thought with correct syntax, proper use of

lexical items , and proper morpheme usage . With all the monitoring in

progress , it is highly likely that toward the en d of the sentence the

monitori ng of this inexperienced wri ter broke down and she became in­

attentive to those misspel led items either from physical or mental

fa tigue and/or lack of motivation. This fatigue may be caused by the

student •s inability to pace hersel f duri ng the theme . Lack of motivation may be the result of false impressions given to students before they enrolled in col lege . Parenta l expecta­

tions are high because they wa nt 11Johnny11 and 11Susie1 1 to have the 94

col lege educations they never had the opportun ity to acqui re . To ease

their sons • and daughters • fears about col lege, parents tel l them that

it wi-l l be easy because 11Johnny11 and 11Susie11 always performed wel l in

grade and high schoo 1 and recei ved high grades, and co 11ege is no

di fferent. Suddenly at col lege, inexperienced wri ters · have to take

formal wri ting seriously, and they are not prepared to assume that

kind of responsib ility or the hard work that it requires to become

good wri ters who are abl e to express themsel ves logically, coherently, and creatively. The moti vation that wa s so high when they fi rst ar­

rived at col l ege immediately plunges to zero. Therefore , ill at ease,

they ass ume the task of wri ting hal f-heartedly and convince themsel ves

that they will write what is req ui red with little concern fo r accuracy or thought . The next set of erro rs conta ined in an excerpt taken from

a freshman theme displays what happens when inexperienced wri ters are

not attentive to the rules that ma ke up our language .

Even though there are run-on sentences , the student is aware ,

nevertheless , that there are bounda ries marked by punctuation whereby

the reader can pause before going on to the next thought. His lack of

rule applicati on, along with morphemic and phonemi c errors, create a

great deal of 11no i se11 or 11interference11 within the sample that ma ke

reading the sentences tedious. The fo llowing example wa s wri tten by a male student who had some interesting and insightfu l thoughts to express but some how became laden with a great many spel ling erro rs .

Al l he [the foreman] has to do is made sure his crew is doi ng the work

properly and that the job is progressing according to scheduale . The 95

next easiest job would be that of the carpender all he has to do is cut and nail boards togather. The most diffi cult job is that of the laborer he 's the one that gets the backbreaking job of diggi ng hol es or cartting around wheel barrows ful l of cement. Foremen sit in their vehicle reading blupri nts.

This example of basic writing is taken from a theme in which the topic centers around a particular kind of work and what respons i­ bi lities that job entails. This student chooses construction and develops his theme around the pattern of easiest to most difficult tasks. He uses some _ good examples to illustrate his poi nt and above average vocabulary .

The fi rst error appears in the verb /med/ . The present and the present progressive are the tenses this student uses in the fi rst sentence. Instead of is ma ke , the student reverts to past tense made.

A i replaces the �- It is possible that the student anticipates the

/d/ sound in the verb do ing which is fo und five words later in the sentence, or that he is a 1 ready concentrating on the d of the word schedul e. This word presents spelling di fficulty fo r the average student beca use it is a two-syl labled word which may times is pro- I� nounced wi th three syl lables /skEJU�l/.

/SkE!ul/ is a Lati n word which has an sch spelling and an /sk/ pronunciation . The manner in which this student spel ls the word , namely, scheduale, indicates that he pronounces it with three syl l a­ bles or hypercorrects , and therefore , wri tes as he pronounces it. The fi rst part of the wo rd wi th the sch di fficulty is spelled correctly; 96

it is the last part of the word that contains the error. The student

inserts an a to replace the schwa sound that occurs in unstressed syl lables . Since the first syl lable receives the stress, the second and thi rd are unstressed. This word is not part of the average student •s active vocabulary and because it is deri ved from Latin, presents even more spel ling di ffi culty. Looking at the next error, one may say that it is a possible perseveration of the word schedule. I /Karp�ntar/ substitutes the voiced d for its unvoiced counter- part, t. Fromkin and Ro dman state in their 11 Rul es of Phonol ogy .. that

11an al veolar stop becomes a voiced flap when preceded by a stressed vowel and fol l owed by an unstressed vowel .. (125). In other words , when people pronounce words such as writer and rider, they pronounce them i denti ca lly, both with a Flap I d/ . This inexperienced wri ter writes as he speaks . The stressed vowel � in the fi rst syl lable and the unstressed vowel e of the last syl lable force the speaker to use the Flap /d/ rul e, and because of this pronunciation similari ty in speaking, this student writes the word incorrectly.

Whether or not he perseverates the schwa sound as · he wrote it in the word scheduale or just perseverates the letter � because it is found fifteen times previous to the mi sspelled word and eight times in the same sentence is a matter of close inspection and analysis.

/Tc.g{�·/ is misspel led as togather wi th an � replacing the ·e. There may be some interference between the meaning 11tO join in a unified whole11 and the job itsel f of accumul ating or gathering the boards before they can be cut and then nailed togethe r. After all, he tal ks 97

about construction and how the duties become progressively more difficult as one goes down the 1 i ne from the person overseeing the project to the actual physical laborer putti ng in eight physically­ strenuous hours. He may be concentrating so heavily on the amount of di fficulty invol ved in the job that he inadvertently confuses semantics with lexicon . Whether or not it is perseveration and/or interference, the fact remains that this inexperienced wri ter makes more errors as the excerpt continues. This particul ar theme from which the excerpt was ta ken was wri tten in longhand ; it may wel l have been wri tten wi thin a short period of time. This inexperi enced wri ter may not have had a strong grarrmar or spelling background duri ng his twelve years of public education (r-esulting in interference), or he may have appl ied the wrong rules when spelling words (resulting in hy percorrection).

Cartting is mi sspel led wi th two t's instead of one, and this student may have been applying the rule fo r final consonants. Hanna,

Hodges� and Hanna state that:

The geminati on of consonants [was] an examp le of an effo rt

on the part of our fo rebears to spel l sounds in certain

consistent ways . The fact that a doubled consonant was

al ready often used to write a final consonant sound preceded

by a short-vowel sound (add, egg) led to a new rul e that

such a fi na1 consonant s haul d be daub1 ed when a suffix

beginning wi th a short-vowel sound was added (Bat/batting).

(212 ) 98

This student vague 1 y remembers but mi sapp 1 i es the ru 1 e to the word

carting. The � changes the short-vowel sound from /� / to /a/ and as a result, the t does not have to be doubled. He may have been per­

severating the geminate consonant � in the word digging. He remembers and applies the rule correctly to this word, but does not remember the exact rule when writi ng the word carting. It is quite noti ceable now

that the errors are "converging .. or appearing in more rapid succes sion as the theme progresses. The next error is only two words away.

The word wheel barrows contains a phoneme antici pation. The first .Q_ replaces an a. There are ten o's preceding the error, all in the same sentence. It may well be the case that this student per- · severates the o sound in these words . The error occurs near the end of the sentence , and by this time the inexperi enced wri ter may be losing motivation. It could also be an erro r in the way the student pronounces this parti cul ar word. In other words , it may be an

110rtholect" error, that is, an orthographic/dialect probl em. The I student may be accustomed to pronouncing the word as /wi 1 bar .a z/ I instead of /wi 1 b� r� z/ . The student may be writing · in a manner resembl ing his speaking patterns. This is not unconmon in Freshman

Composition themes. In fact, it is more the rule than the exception, especially when students come from schools which do not emphasize practice in fo nnal wri ting. The next error also poi nts in this direction. The obvious error in this last sentence is that the student does not plural ize the wo rd vehicle to make it agree with its subject 99

and verb. He remembers to spel l the pl ural fo remen correctly, and the

plural of man always presents spel ling diffi culty for a great many

students. His attention may have been focused so heavily on · this

particular word tha t he failed to add the {-�} to vehicles.

The last error of this excerpt refers to what was said in a previous paragraph concerning phonetics versus actual spelling. In the word bluepri nts , the student omi ts the �- It is a silent letter which signal s a tense vowel sound preceding it. · This rule fo rgotten , the inexperienced writer copies the word the way it sounds , namely, , /bl uprznts/ . . Thi s error is the last word in the sentence, and points very much to the fact that student mot ivation usually wanes at the end of a sentence and that is where a good many errors are fo und.

Al though this student uses good examples and an above average vocabulary, he mi sses the whole point in writing, that is, to get one's point across in as . few mi sta kes as possible whi le at the same time maintaining reader interest. It appears that this inexperienced writer fai led to learn adequately the rules of grarrmar and punctuation. The wri ting can be understood despite the number of errors , but the reader is left wi th the impression that this wri ter is a careless, insufficiently-ski lled, poo rly-trained orthographer. A student may go to great 1 engths to acquire an impressive vocabulary, but if he fai ls to use it precisely, then he has defeated his whole purpose in writing. The next example a 1 so 1 eaves the reader with a very poor impression of the student 's wri ting capabilities. It carries the 100

message that somewhere during his school years he fa iled to acquire the necessary linguisti c information vital to logical , coherent, and unified wri ting. Time kept runing, problems kept adding, constration kept away, and the need fo r learning still there, there where my mi nd always was , by the time runing and two weeks later which I lost all my constration at the school , and without notecing that is a wast of time and effecting my schoo 1 , then I noteced how bad I was effected by those events , so I deci ed to catch up at the schoo 1 and try to forget about those troubles· and as soon as possible, I start tri ng that mean whi le trouble didn't stope, but increased back home , and news over phone wa s coming day after day, in letters weak after another, and again I lost all my constration at the school.

This combination run-on/col111la splice is obviously an excerpt from an inexperienced writer's theme. First of all,· this student has a probl em wi th punctuation and syntax. This type of wri ti ng (minus the errors ) might be found in a Wi lliam Faulkner nove 1 where stream of consciousness plays an important part in arous ing the reader's erootions and evoking thought. This kind of wri ting has no place in

Freshman Composition. Learning to wri te fo nnal exposition is the primary goal of this course. As mentioned previously, this is an

"ortholect" type of writing. Wi th very 1 i ttl e practi ce in forma1 writing, the basic writer has no recourse but to wri te as he ta 1 ks .

In order fo r a teacher to find out what speci fic problems this in­ experienced writer must overcome in fo nnal wri ting, she must analyze each error ca·reful ly. 101

In the very fi rst erro r runing is spelled incorrectly because

this student fai led to observe the rule for geminate consonants. The short vowel /A/ preceding the consonant � and the short vowel /I/ of the suffix necessitate doubl ing of the !!.· It may be lack of rule

knowledge or carelessness in applying the rul es.

The next error mi ght be classified as a TOT state where the student remembers the initial and final portions of a word but fai ls to recall the mi ddl e. /�nstr6��n/ is wri tten ·for the word

I kans � ntr�� � n/ . This four-syl labled word is reduced to three syl lables because of the student's inability to recall the entire wo rd . It should be emphasized that the error is not a random one; it appears three times in the passage , namely, in the beginning, the mi ddl e, and the very end.

Interference and hypercorrection tend to be insistent and recurring. Shaughnessy · mentions in her boo k that inexperienced wri ters tend to 1 ose sight of i ndi vi.dua1 1 etters . when they wri te and me rely focus on entire words . Furthermore , in focus ing on enti re words, she says that these same students remember initial and fi nal sounds but the middle sounds become fuzzy congl omerations of phonemes

( 174). Po lysyll abi c words are especially suscepti b 1 e to being mi s­ spel led beca use of their length. In the next error it is likewi se the middl e of the word that is erroneous. / /Not�S%9/ is misspel led with an � instead of an i. It may be that thi s student reanal yzed notecing from the word note instead of notice. The syl lable with the wrong phoneme is an unstres sed one and 103

here that this is a tradition a 1 s hi bbo 1 eth which appears on many standard ized tests and col l ege entrance examinations.

Effecting is used instead of the verb affecting. Further down in the sentence the word effected is used again erroneously. This confusion between the noun and the verb are frequently-occurring errors in fres hman themes. The semantics may have interfered with the results that happen because of these so-called problems that were I arising. The noun /afe:kt/ has the stress fal ling on the second syl lable whi ch leaves the unstressed first syl lable with the schwa or

1�1 sound .. This schwa sound may have infl uenced this student's spelling of the word. Beca use this student is .. affected .. by confusion between simi l ar-sounding. words , he unconsciously omi tted the d in decided. This word has three d•s within a short space of seven letters , and the student may have become confused because of the high incidence of this one letter in such a small word. The incidence of three d's in one small wo rd is not as common , and so the student inadvertently deletes one in the mi ddl e because the initial and fi nal letters are identical . The � of tryi ng is omitted in the next error and thi s causes the word to become one syl lable. It is possible that the student dropped the � because he was thinking of· the rul e that concerns words which end in l. and the � changes to .!_ before adding the suffi xes {-ful }, {-ed}, {-est}, and {-es}. In the case of the end� ng {-ing} , the � remains and the ending is simply added on. This student nei ther 104

keeps the y_ nor changes it to j_, but rather ami ts it a 1 together. It may · be a pen skip or the lack of concen tration on the student•s part.

If the student were observing the rul e mentioned above, he may have seen the j_ and thought he had changed the � to j_ already . In omi tting the �' this student change s a two-syllabled word to one syl lable. In the next error one word becomes two words.

Meanwhile · is one word , but this inexperienced writer has wri tten it as two words and in the process changes · the meaning of that part of the sentence. Meanwhi le · is- an adverb , . but the separation of the word changes it to the verb mean and the conjunction while. This confusion adds to the .. noise .. in· the. sentence and makes it that much more difficult to understand. This is a hypercorrection based on an incomplete knowl edge of comp�unding and idioms.

The word stope is . spelled with an e. · Adding the diacri tic e to the end of a word signals - the reader that the vowel is long. What this inexperienced writer has written is /stop/ for /st�p/ . It may be that this student anti cipates the !. ending on the words home and phone. The letter e is fo und twenty-three times in words precedi ng the mi sspelled one. It could be the case that the student per­ severates the � sound because of its high · incidence in thi s 1 engthy sentence. Obviously the student is not aware of the diacritic � rule, or if he is, disregards it in this case. The word /wik/ is misspelled as weak. It may be that outside interference causes some distraction in the spelling of this word.

The student • s concentrati on becomes weaker as the probl ems at home 105

become greater. As a result of outside infl uences, the student wri tes weak instead of week. Even the phrase that contains the erro r is

faulty and incomplete. The student means week after week, one letter

right after another, but instead shortens the phrase to weak after another. The word week is such a corrmon word that it is di fficult to understand how it can be mi sspelled unless some out side infl uence is acting on the student as he writes the word.

In this longer-than-usual sentence, there are a great many errors on the levels of syntax , morphology, phonology, semantics , and

punctuation. Al l these errors are . compounded by the fact that thi s inexperienced writer incorrectly uses idioms such as at the school fo r at school ; that mean whi le fo r but meanwhile; omits necessary articles

such as news over phone fo r �ews over the phone; and sho rtens phrases and causes them to lose their impact, namely, weak after anothe r fo r week after week, one letter after another. To say that this student

lacks sufficient skill to write precisely is stating it mildly, and yet this is the sort of wri ting a teacher can expect to recei. ve when students are poorly prepared for formal writing, and furthermore, lack the moti vation necessary to wri te coherently and logically.

Inexperienced writers who come to col l ege generally lack the awareness and motivation necessary for good writing. They are not totally to blame because they have very 1 i ttle choi ce over thei r environment or school ing. However, they do have a choice when it comes to roo ti vating themsel ves to weed out thei r grallll1atical errors

one by one. It is a time-consuming, tedious process that is not 106

easily accompli shed over a short period of time. They need a great deal of determination to overcome those obstacles which stand in their way. There is no easy cure to overcoming phono 1 ogi ca 1 , rna rphemi c, syntactic, and semantic weaknesses. Inexperi enced writers must persist in their effo rts to learn the rules of grammar and syntax if they are ever to become literate in the sense that they can express themselves clearly, concisely, and correctly in wri ting. As Shaugh­ nessy so succinctly puts it: 11 For the basic wri ting student ... wri ting is but a line that moves haltingly across the page, exposing as it goes all that the writer doesn 't know .. ... (7).

In the past two years , I have taught approximately two hundred

Freshman Composition students . It has been my experience duri ng that time to have at least ten such inexperienced writers per semester but certainly not more than twenty-five . These are the students I quickly came to recognize as needing remedial assistance in grarrmar and spelling. When I noti ced significant improvement in their writing skills by the end of the semester, indeed these were the ones from which I had recei ved the biggest chall enge but had derived the great­ est sati sfaction. A teacher cannot help all of these inexperi enced writers because some lose moti vation and the will to improve their writing skills, but if she can· strengthen the wri ting skills of just a few of them during the semester, and in turn strengthen their se 1 f­ confidence and self-i mage , then she has accompli shed that which is expected of her as an educator. 107

CONCLUSION

Becoming proficient in wri ti ng skills is the aim of all conscientious students and the goa 1 of every Engl ish teacher. In order to write effectivel y, one must commit to memo ry many phonologi­ cal , morphological , and syntactic rules. These rul es are the under­ lying foundation upon which our language operates . This appears to be an almost impossible task for the inexperienced wri ter to accomplish .

It is a process, however� that all of us begin even before we can tal k. According to Condon and Sander in their article from Sci ence :

If the infant, from the beginning, moves in precise shared

rhythm with the organi zation of the speech structure of his

culture , then he participates developmentally through

complex sociobiological entrainment proce sses in mi llions of

repeti tions of linguistic fo rms long before he later uses

them in speaking and conmunication. By the time he begins

to speak, he may have already laid down within himself the

fo rm and structure of the language system of his cul ture .

This would encompass a mul ti pl icity of interlocking aspects :

rhythmi c and syntactic 'hierarch ies , • suprasegmental

features , and paral inguistic nuances , not to mention body motion styles and rhythms . (101 )

Therefore, whether or not a person acknowledges the fact, we are immersed in the 1 anguage and what Hockett ca 11s an .. i nterna 1 i zed 108

grarTITlar11 (94) from the very day we are born . Essentially, we have the rules drilled into us through the use of numerous examples and repeti­ tions, and when we begin fo rmal educa tion, we learn the wri tten rules underlyi ng why we speak and wri te the way we do .

There is no magic method to becomi ng a good writer. It is a s 1 ow , cumulative process and as Shaughnessy contends , "is something wri ters are always · learning to do " ( 276). Errors are ma inly the result of the inexperienced writer • s · abi 1 i ty to concentrate steadi ly when there are a number of continual processes goi ng on at one time in sentence production ( Fry 158) , among which are the student's effo rts to use pol ysyl labic words which ordi narily are not fami liar to the inexperienced writer. As a result, hypercorrections occur. When the inexperienced writer has to "moni-to r" ( Laver 132) syntax, semantics , morpho logy , phonology , and lexicon , that wri ter's attention will invari ably break down , and again hypercorrections resul t. Moreover, in the process of encoding, the student 's mi nd will always be several words ahead or severa 1 words behind returning to words or phrases about which that student is doubtful . Therefore , there is this constant movement of the mind back and forth checking on what has been and what is going to be transcribed. As Anne Cutler definitively states in her article entitled "Errors of Stress and Intonation ,"

"There appears to be a kind of Murphy 's Law ...that states : There is no component or stage in the production of a sentence but an error can occur there" (67). 109

In looking at all the errors I analyzed, I noticed parti cular­

ly that they general ly occurred as the result of the same stress, struc�ure , and/or spelling between the errors and some other words which occurred in the sentence. · It is, then, not only a matter of the

inexperi enced writer having to know how to spell certain wo rds correctly but also a matter of that student having the proper intuitive knowledge of where syl labic and sentential stress must fa l l.

Stress, it seems , is an important aspect in cogent wri ting. For example, . in anticipation/perseveration errors , stress plays a relatively important part because mo st of the erro rs occur as a result of similari ties in sound , structure , but especial ly, stress.

Similarly, in metathes ized words the transposition occurs predominantly in the stresse� syl lable of the word. Blends, likewi se, show an identical stress pattern not only in the two words which are blended but also in the blended word as well. Moreover, in TOT words and malapropisms stress is a crucial feature , and fo r the mo st part, occurs in the same syl lable of the mi sspelled or mi sused words as it does in the intended words. Along with stress, other lingui stic simi lari ties are also relevant.

In fact, the more similari ties there are between the error and the intended word , the more likel i hood of error. For example , in anticipation/perseveration , the similari ty of phonemes withi n words , phrases , or enti re sentences is a corrmon source of error. Likewi se,

in metathesized wo rds there is nonnally phoneme similari ty within the wo rds , and this phonetic similari ty contri butes to the likelihood of 110

error. Furthermore , semantic simi l ari ty is a predominant feature of blended words. Because two words with similar meanings are competing fo r a place within a sentence , both words are 1 i kely to combine, creati ng a "new" word . Other similari ties in blends which are important to examine are phoneme and morpheme simi lari ty before the two wo rds are blended and syntactic similarity. Likewi se, TOT words and malapropisms resul t because of a great many s-imilari ties, namely, same initial and final letters , same sounds within syl lables , same number of syl lables , same features of articulation, and same part of speech. It is obvious, then , by looki ng hol istically at the patterns into which these types of words fa 11 that one can readi ly confi rm the fact that the incidence of erro r is more likely to surface when there are many similari ties in sound, structure , and stress between errors and intended words than if there were no similari ties at all. Anne

Cutler posits that:

A correctly produced sentence involves the successful

imposition of suprasegmental features at several poi nts :

the assi gnment of primary lexical stress to the correct

syl lable of pol ysyl labic words , the correct placement of

stress within the sentence and within each consti tuent · of

it, and the imposition of an intonation contour, the latter detennined by a number of factors , 1 inguistic (whether or not the sentence is a yes-no question, fo r example) , para- 1 inguistic ( the emotional state of the speaker/ [writer]), Ill

and pragmatic ( the functions of ·the sentence in context , whether irony is intended, etc . ) . (67)

It is apparent from the error analyses I perfonned that stress, in addition to meaning and structural similarity, contributes to the effectiveness and meaning of the wri tten word.

In looking at all these important areas , one must conclude that there is no panacea fo r . inexperienced writers • spelling ills.

They must accorrmodate themselves to two or three times the effo rt that the more experi enced writers do . Mi na Shaughnessy concl udes that the inexperienced writer possesses to a certain degree the same di ffi­ culties that all wri ters possess :

Fo r the probl ems of getting an idea and beginning to wri te ,

of remembering where one is going as sentence generates .

sentence, of sustaining the tension between right and

readabl e and being onesel f- -these are problems few wri ters escape ... The [ inexperienced wri ter] merely come s to them later than most and must therefore work harder and faster to

so lve them. (293)

There is no tried and true method of so 1 vi ng the pro b 1 ems of inexperienced writers . Because they are more accustomed to speaking than writing, they must learn, first of all , that there is a di s­ ti nction between both modes of communication, and second, that wri ting requires more steps than just thinki ng of an idea and expressing it in wo rds. Mo reover, it requires careful considerati on and 112

re-consideration of punctuation , grammar, spelling, meaning, and word choice. There must be respect fo r the process as well as the product.

Teache rs , too , must examine themselves introspectively in order to be certain that they . have a sincere , unbiased attitude toward the inexperienced wri ters whom they will no doubt encounter in thei r teaching careers. Moreover, these teachers need to examine every aspect of the inexpe rienced writers • capabilities in an honest attempt to discover alternate ways of hel ping these studen ts achieve their goals and desires. When teachers do thi s, Shaughnessy says that:

He begins to search in what students write and say fo r clues

to their reasoning and their purposes , and in what he does

fo r gaps and misjudgements. He begins. teaching anew and

must be prepared to be taxed beyond the 1 imi ts he may· have

originally set for himself as a teacher of wri ti ng. He wi ll

need to give not simply more time but more imaginative and

infonned attention to what his students · wri te than he . may have given in the days when freshmen had learned most of

what they needed to know about writing BEFORE they got to

college. He wi ll need to question and even abandon styles

and methods of teaching that seemed to work before. He wi ll

need to culti vate patience fo r the slow pace of progress in

this most complex of crafts and find ways of refreshing his

own bel ief that writing is not only a necessary skill in col l ege and an advantageous ski 11 in work but the most 113

accessible way people have of exploring and perfecting thei r thoughts. (292-293)

The inexperienced wri ters , then, who come to South Dakota

State Uni versity from small communities are undoubtedly going to

encounter writing difficulty because of thei r defi ciencies in wri ting

skills. The teachers of these students will need to possess a great

deal of patience, maintain an optimi stic outlook in the face of many

· defeats , and change their traditional ways of looki ng at mi sspelled words . This may even enta i 1 the enrol lment of these teachers in linguistic, paralinguistic, or special analysis classes in order to

change their traditional views on spel ling errors. As a result of

their attitude changes , they will begin to notice a great many hyper­

corrections in student wri ting which they never noticed before or

failed to analyze. This going "beyond correct" to the 11Creative" or

"innov a ti ve" incorrect presents novel words with which teachers can

study how inexperienced wri ters • minds function as they process words,

phrases, and sentences ; furthermore, this intense inspection will

highl i ght those weak areas of the wri ting process that req uire further

study and concentration. 114

GLOSSARY

ALVEOLAR RIDGE : Designati ng the bony ridge of the gums behind the upper front teeth . Formed, as Engl ish t, d, s, by -touching or approaching the alveolar ridge with the tip or-the tongue.

ANALOGIZING: Explaining something by comparing it with something simi lar. · The process by which new or less fami liar words , constructions, · or pronunciations conform to the pattern of older or more fami liar (and often unrelated) ones. For example, energizer is fo rmed from energy by analogy; with apologize from apology.

ANTICI PATION : A sound or phoneme that appea rs erroneously in a word as a resul t of the infl uence of the same sound or phoneme occurring in the word(s) following the error, fo r example, block dog fo r black dog.

ARTICULATORY PROCESS : To produce a speech sound by moving · articulators , that is, the vocal cords , tongue, and li-ps in such a manner as to produce sounds and words .

BILABIAL : To stop or constri ct the air stream at the closed or nearly closed lips, as in the Engl ish stops � and �·

BLEND: Known a 1 so as a portmanteau word. A wo rd formed by combining parts of two other wo rds. Motel is a blend of motor and hote 1 ; smog is a b 1 end of smoke and fog.

CONTINUANT : A speech sound that can be prolonged as long as the breath 1 asts, with no s i-gni fi cant change in the qua 1 i ty of the sound. r, �' th, �' �' �' i, l, �' �' �' �' and h and all vowels are all cont1nuants.

CONVERGENCE : The predominance or increase in error that results in wri ting because of physical/menta l fatigue and/or lack of mot ivation . This convergence of errors most often occurs or increases at the ends of sentences , paragraphs , and themes.

ENCODING PROCESS: Recording spoken communication through graphic marks or symbols. The morphemic, phonological , semanti c, 115

lexical , and syntactic gesta lts that the brain perfonns befo re a thought or an idea can be transcribed.

FLAP /d/ : A sound produced by slapping the tongue against the roof of the mouth or alveolar ridge. In certain words the ed ending assumes the sound of /t/, fo r example, pushed, parked, and piCked.

FRICATIVE : Pronounced by fo rcing the breath, either voiced or voiceless, through a narrow · slit formed at some poi nt in the mouth. The air particles are pushed one against the other, producing noi se because of the fricti on . The fricatives in Engl ish are s, z, f, v, · - -- - th , s h, and j .

FUSION : A sub-type of blends. Joining together or uniting as in the case of words such as somewhat, oftentimes, and neverthel ess in order to produce a new word with a different syntax. In addi tion , fusion occurs when two words are joined together to form one word as in the case of blends. For example, fiercefu l is a fusion of fierce and fa rcefu 1 where the force of forcefu1 is b 1 ended into ob1 i vi on because fierce and ful. have joined together to fo nn an entirely new word .

GEMINATE CONSONANTS : A term used to denote a daub 1 ed con .... sonant grapheme ; fo r example, the dd in add or the nn in running.

GESTALT: · Any of the integrated structures or processes that the brain fo nns when it encodes a thought or an idea into speech or the written word .

GRAPHEME : A unit of writing which in alphabetic sy stems represents a spoken sound. Thus , the graphemes which represent the word /b�y/ are � and �' whereby � represents /b/ and � represents · /::J y/ .

HYPERCORRECTION : A term used to describe the process whereby . a person writes/ speaks an erro neous word when that person actually wants to write/speak in an 11educated11 manner. It is often an attempt to impress someone else. When inexperienced wri ters attempt to become more effecti ve wri ters in composition, they go beyond the acceptable 11COrrect11 to the 11 i nnovati ve11 incorrect; fo r example, the word contra­ dictory becomes contradicti ve where the wrong morpheme ending {--ive} is used in place of {-ory} . 116

INTONATION : Significant level s and variations in pitch sequences wi thin an utterance ; the manner of applying final pi tch to a spoken sentence or phrase, that is, to ask a question with a ri sing intonation.

LATERAL : An articulation in which the airstream flows over the sides of the tongue, as in the Engl ish lin leaf.

LEXICON/LEXICAL ITEM : The tota l stock of morphemes in a language, especially of words as isolated items of vocabulary rather than elements in grammati cal structure . Consists of whole words and portions of wo rds, such as prefixes, suffixes, and infl ections.

LIQUID: Without fricti on and like a vowel : used to describe certain consonants, particularly land �·

MALAPROPISM: The ludicrous misuse of words, especially through confusion caused by resemblance in sound but unl ike the intended words in meaning, for example, mutteri ng for motheri ng.

METATHESIS: The transposing of letters or sounds in a word , fo r example, techinques fo r techniques.

MORPHEME : The smallest meaningful uni t in a language . It may be a compl ete word , as �' or it may be a speech sound that has no meaning when pronounced by itself but contri butes to the meanings of wo rds. For example, the sound /z/ represented by the � in boys . Noted in curly brackets { }.

MORPHOLOGY : The br anch of linguistics that deals with the i nterna 1 structure of words , and of · the rules by which words are fo rmed. With syntax , it forms a divis ion of grammar . In other words, the "word buildi ng11 properties of a language.

MORPHOPHONEMIC RULES : These determine the di fferent phonetic representations of a mo rpheme . Thus , the regular plural morpheme is phonetical ly /z/, /s/, or /� z/ , dependi ng on the final phoneme of the noun to which it is attached. 117

NASAL : Produced by stopping all or part of the breath in the mouth and permi tti ng it to pass through the nose , as in the sounds �' !!_, !!9.·

ORTHOGRAPHY : Spelling in acco rdance with accepted usage . How wo rds are spelled in a language . 11The science of spel ling by the eye instead of the ear ...

All ograph : Any of the ways a unit of a wri ti ng system, as the letter of an alphabet, is formed or shaped. Any of the uni ts or combination of units that can represent a single phoneme , mo rpheme , syl lable, and so forth. For example, the phoneme [s] has the allo- graphs �, ss, �' �' and �-

Ortholect: Refers to the way in which wri ters , unfami liar with the written language , transcribe words . They wri te in the same manner in which they speak.

PERSEVERATION : The sound or phoneme that appears erroneously in a word as a resul t of the infl uence of the same sound or phoneme occurri ng in the word(s) preceding the error. For example, brown fringers is wri tten instead of brown finge rs .

PHONEME : A set of phonetically - similar but slightly di fferent sounds in a language that are heard as the same sound by native speakers , and are represented in phonemi c transcri ption by the same symbol , as in Engl ish, the phoneti cally differentiated sounds repre­ sented by Q is £!.!:!., spi�, and !i_Q_. The smal lest meaningful uni t of sound whereby the subst1tution � one fo r another changes the meaning of a morpheme as in the following two sentences : I'll bat you on the head. ·I'll pa t yo u on the head. Noted in slash brackets I/.

PHONETICS: The branch of language study dealing with speech sounds , their production and combinations, and thei r representation by written symbols. The system of sounds of a parti cular language. Noted in square brackets [ ].

PHONET IC/PHONOLOGICAL TRANSCRIPTION : A system whereby sounds are wri t ten out in some sort of notation that can be understood by others who speak that language. For example, the phonetic tran­ scription of the word phonetics is /f�nlti ks/. 118

PHONOLOGY : The study . of the sound structure of a 1 anguage including phonetics and/or phonemics. The study of the changes in speech sounds in the deve 1 opment of a 1 anguage or dia 1 ect. For example, the word 1 angua�e mi ght be pronounced /lJtfnw;, Jf in one part of the country or in anot er dialect; a popular pronunciation mi ght be I 1.-'nw.t.J/. .

PREMATURE CLOSURE : When the mind suddenly halts its spel ling of a certa1n word because another sound or phoneme or gestalt in the sentence interferes wi th the correct spelling; this is especially true in anticipati ons and perseverations. For example, in the phrase trivial priblems , there is premature closure because of perseveration of the l etter i in trivial whereas in trovial probl ems there is anti cipation of the � in probl ems .

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS : The study of the psychological factors invol ved in the preception and response to lingui stic phenomena.

REANALYSIS: When the fo rm of one word is derived by looking at another derivation of that wo rd. For example, the wo rd preventa­ tion reanalyzed from the verb prevent by a.dding the ending {-a ti on} to obtain the noun form.

SCHWA /�/ : The neutral , uncolored, centra l vowel sound of roost unstressed syl labl es in English; the sound of a in ago , � in agent, and i in sanity. The most common sound in Engl 1sh.

SEMANTICS : The branch of lingui stics concerned with the nature , structure, and especially the development and changes , · of the meanings of speech forms , or with contextual meaning.

SENTENTIAL STRESS : The seq uence of voice stresses normally given to words in a sentence. Voi ce stress gi ven to certain words or syl lables . in a sentence for emphasis, contrast, irony, satire , and so fo rth.

SHIBBOLETH : Traditional usage soleci sms , usually sets of wo rds such as all usion/illusion which look alike but have different meanings. These sets of words are often incorrectly used by inexperi­ enced writers who possess a limited vocabulary. 119

SIBILANT : A consonant characterized by a hissing sound, as in �, �, �, ch, and j_.

SONORANT : A vo iced consonant that is less sonorous than a vowel but more sonorous than an unvoiced plosive. The Engl ish sana- rants are l, �, �, �' �, and �·

SPOONERISM: [Named after the Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844- 1930), of New College , Oxford , famous for such slips]. An intentional interchange of sounds , usually initial sounds, in two or mo re words. An example is a wel l-boiled icicle for a wel l-oi led bicycle.

SUFFIX CHUNKING : Ta kes place when an inexperi enced wri ter is doubtful about the end of a word , and therefore, puts a suffix on it that seems correct. An example is the word succeedment instead of success.

SYLLABIC STRESS : The most prominent sounds - or the more heavi ly stressed part of a polysyllabic word. In the word syl lable, the � of the first syl labl e assumes the primary stress.

SYNCOPATION : The dropping of sounds or 1 etters from the mi ddl e of a word , as in cuboard fo r cupboard.

SYNTAX : The arrangement of wo rds as elements in a sentence to show their relati onship to one another; the organization and relation­ ship of word groups , phrases , clauses, and sentences , that is, sentence structure. An example is The boys enjoy eating ice .cream, but not Enjoy boys the ice cream eating.

TARGET : The word intended in an utterance or written sentence. For example, the word adament is the target, but the inexperienced writer does not quite achieve the obj ective and writes aminent instead.

TIP OF THE TONGUE : · It is a state in which one cannot quite recall a certain word, name , place, or event , but recalls parts of the wo rd , such as number of syl lables , initial and final letters , and primary stress; may recal l synonyms and even the meaning of ·the wo rd. For example, the word vivantly is a TOT error used in place of the intended word vividly. 120

VELAR: Pronounced wi th the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate, as in Engl ish [g] in �·

VELUM : The soft, mova bl e part of the pal ate at the back of the mouth.

VOICED/UNVOICED: Having vibrations of the vocal cords during articulat1on , as in Engl ish [m] in the voi ced word me .

Pronounced without vibrations of the vocal cords, as in Engl ish [s] in voiceless see. 121

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