【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 slip of the tongue is also known as spoonerism, after the Rev. William A. Spooner, an Anglican clergyman (英國國教教士 ) at Oxford University, who was renowned for his tongueslips. It is said that he ever said the following passage to the students in Oxford University: (8) You have hissed my mystery lectures. I saw you fight a liar in the back quad. In fact, you have tasted the whole worm. (你們對我的神秘演講噓聲反對。我看見你們在后院里和一個說謊的人打架。事實上，你們嘗到了整條蟲的滋味。 ) Actually, he wanted to say: (9) You have missed my history lectures. I saw you light a fire in the back quad. In fact, you have wasted the whole term. (你們沒有來聽我的歷史演講。我看見你們在后院點火。事實上，你們浪費了整個學期。 ) 2) Malapropisms Tipofthetongue phenomenon(唇邊現(xiàn)象 )—the phenomenon in which you feel that some word is just eluding you, that you know the word, but it just won‘t e to the surface. It is also known as Malapropisms, after a character called Mrs. Malaprop in a play by Sheridan who consistently produced ―nearmisses‖ for words, with great ic effect. Speakers generally have an accurate phonological outline of the word, and can get the initial sound correct and mostly know the number of syllables in the word. Our ―wordstorage‖ may be partially anized on the basis of some phonological information and that some words in that ―store‖ are more easily retrieved than others. When we make mistakes in this retrieval process, there are often strong phonological similarities between the target word and the mistake. ., speakers produced secant(正切 ), sextet(六重唱 ) and sexton(教堂司事 ), when asked to name a particular type of navigational instrument sextant (航海中使用的六分儀 ). 4. Language prehension Language prehension—the process involved in understanding the meaning of spoken and written language. Reading and speech prehension both involve several processes. It is important for the reader or listener to take account of the grammatical structure and the meaning of what is being presented. Meaning is extracted from text or speech by relating what is presented to information stored in longterm memory. Sound prehension Understanding language is greatly influenced by slight changes in discourse which listeners attend to, and that listeners do not understand the information word by word. () This is because: 1) Hearers cannot ?take down‘ or ?match‘ sounds one by one. 2) Each sound varies considerably depending on what es before and after it. So direct matching of each sound is impossible. 3) There is no definite borderline between acoustically similar sounds, just as it is not always possible to distinguish between a flower vase and a mug, or a bush and a tree. When someone hears a sentence, she often latches (fasten) on to outline clues, and ?jumps to conclusions‘ about what she is hearing. An analogy might make this clearer. Suppose someone found a large foot sticking out from under her bed one night. She would be likely to shriek ?There‘s a man under my bed‘, because past experience has led her to believe that large feet are usually attached to male human beings. Instead of just reporting the actual situation ?There‘s a foot sticking out from under my bed‘, she has jumped to the conclusion that this foot belongs to a man, and this man is lying under the bed. The evidence suggests that we make similar ?informed guesses‘ about the material we hear. In an experiment the subjects were asked to hear the following utterances: (10) a. It was found that the *eel was on axle. b. It was found that the *eel was on shoe. c. It was found that the *eel was on orange. d. It was found that the *eel was on table. ―*‖ is a cough. ―*eel‖ in (8a) was understood as wheel。 ―*eel‖ in (8b) as heel。 ―*eel‖ in (8c) as peel。 ―*eel‖ in (8d) as meal. Word prehension Three effects 1) Frequency effect One of the most important factors that affects word recognition is how frequently the word is used in a given discourse or context. This frequency effect describes the additional ease with which a word is accessed due to its more frequent usage in the language. ., words like better or TV occur more often than debtor or mortgage. 2) Recency effect People also recognize a word faster when they have just heard it or read it than when they have not recently encountered it. Frequent words are likely to have been encountered more recently than infrequent words, so it is possible to explain the frequency effect as a recency effect and reduce the number of separate effects that have to be explained. Recency effects describe the additional ease with which a word is accessed due to its repeated occurrence in the discourse or context. 3) Context effect People recognize a word more readily when the preceding words provide an appropriate context for it. (11) a. This is the aorta. b. The heart surgeon carefully cut into the wall of the right aorta. In (11a), people are not given any context that he