Studies of speech corpuses show that people are just as likely to produce speech errors involving parts of words, such as "nail the letter" instead of "mail the letter," as they are to produce errors involving whole words, such as "fax the letter" instead of "mail the letter." This result suggests that people store language in terms of which building block?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The fact that people are just as likely to produce speech errors involving parts of words (such as "nail the letter" instead of "mail the letter") as they are to produce errors involving whole words suggests that people store language in terms of its smallest units of sound, or phonemes. This finding aligns with the theory of generative grammar, which suggests that words are composed of sequences of phonemes.

Studies of Speech Corpuses Show That People Are Just as Likely