MORPHEME UNITS IN SPEECH PRODUCTION - EVIDENCE FROM LABORATORY-INDUCED VERBAL SLIPS

The present experiment sought evidence of the involvement of derivatio nal word morphology in speech production processes. A version of the w ord order competition technique (Baars & Motley, 1976) was used to ind uce a special kind of verbal slip, namely stranding exchange errors. I n these errors, word fragments belonging to two words exchange by stra nding their remaining fragments. The linguistic material was selected so that it could be determined whether morphemic stranding exchanges h ad a higher probability of occurring than non-morphemic ones under con ditions in which various phonological and structural properties of the target words were controlled. The distribution of slips obtained clea rly points to the implication of word derivational morphology in speec h production processes.