Slips of the tongue in Cantonese: Lexical blends and substitutions

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the nature of our mental lexicon through naturalistic slips of the tongue made by native Cantonese speakers. Tongue slips can be categorized into several types, but only two of them are examined in this study, including lexical blends and substitutions. Although we cannot go into one’s mind, we can always get the evidence from the utterances. The examples of slips were mainly collected from ordinary conversation. Such unintentional speech performance provides enlightening insights into the mechanisms of language or more precisely, the processes of speech production. By studying those speech errors, we can learn as much about our mental lexicon. The ultimate purpose of this study is to answer the following questions: How are words stored and retrieved in the mind? To what extent are they connected by semantic associations?