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A Study on the Slip of the Tongue and Voice Guiding Effect

Ningning Liu¹, Jiangtao Fu¹*, Xiaohan Zhu²

Advances in Linguistics Research / 2026,8(2): 227-239 / 2026-06-25 14 7

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• Information:

  1. School of Foreign Languages, Henan University, Kaifeng, China
  2. School of Foreign Studies, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China

• Keywords:
  Slips of the Tongue; Voice Guiding Effect; Language Intuition; Speech Production
• Abstract: This article puts forward a new explanatory mechanism for slips of the tongue, namely the “voice guiding effect”, which operates within working memory. The “voice guiding effect” refers to a speech production mechanism that generates misaligned speech sound sequences, arising because mental phonological representations are activated prior to the articulatory movements of articulators. When speakers experience physical fatigue or emotional stress during speech production, initially activated phonological images stored in working memory direct speech organs toward phonetic implementation. The articulatory system may mistakenly prioritize recently generated phonological representations, then compensate for the omitted earlier representations to fix the mispronunciation. This article aims to investigate the underlying causes of the voice guiding effect. Additionally, it seeks to identify the specific mechanisms involved in this effect and determine the appropriate approach for addressing it. To validate this hypothesis, this study adopts Garman’s typology of speech errors. It analyzes instances from the MIT speech error corpus (English data) and a self-compiled corpus of spontaneous slips of the tongue in daily Chinese discourse.
• DOI: (DOI application in progress)
• Cite: Liu, N. N., Fu, J. T., & Zhu, X. H. (2026). A Study on the Slip of the Tongue and Voice Guiding Effect. Advances in Linguistics Research, 8(2), 227-239.