THE LAPSES OF SPEECH 125 



overshoes became ruvvershoes. With spank in mind, the threat to 

 paddle the refractory youngster became, Well, Til spaddle youf and a 

 too hesitant wavering between it mists and it drizzles resulted in it 

 mizzles. Unexpectedly lucid is the betrayal of an after-dinner speaker 

 who planned to begin, unprepared as I am (Unvorbereitet wie ich bin), 

 but had as a fact carefully rehearsed his part, and who actually said, 

 unprepared as I have myself (Unvorbereitet wie ich mich habe). e 

 Choosing between Scherz and Spass, the speaker said Das ist Jcein 

 Sperz, just as we might say, That is no jost (jest and joke). Wishing 

 to impart the information that he was at home until seven o'clock, and 

 that indeed he was writing until that hour, the speaker said (and 

 might just as well have written), I was at home until seven o'clock 

 was I writing. The process has been graphically presented by indi- 

 cating by the heavy line the above-the-threshold processes, and by the 

 dotted line the sub-threshold impulses, the crossing point being the 

 point of intrusion of the one into the field of the other. 



Or thus : 



The fact that we carry on a manifold activity in the expression of 

 thought is thus sufficiently indicated, and finds marked parallelism, 

 so far as the lapses are concerned, in the interchange of activities (the 



6 Nonsense word makers (Lewis Carroll, Edwin Lear, et alii) seem to be 

 guided by a feeling for this process, along with many other more fanciful and 

 onomatopoetic attractions. The Hunting of the Snark may have a suggestion of 

 a snake and a shark; Torrible Zone suggests torrid and horrible; slithy may be 

 slimy and writhy. Yet these verbal acrobatics naturally involve, as well, any 

 forms of contortion that give amusement and the sound-semblance of sense. 

 Lewis Carroll's own characteristic elucidation is as follows : " For instance, 

 take the two words fuming and furious. Make up your mind that you will say 

 both words, but have it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your 

 mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards fuming, you 

 will say fuming- furious; if they turn, even by a hair's breadth, towards furious, 

 you will say furious-fuming ; but if you have that rarest of gifts, a perfectly 

 balanced mind, you will say frumious." 



6 1 am assured that there is a tendency among the philologists to account 

 for the paradoxical use of the negative and the intrusion of the negative in 

 constructions in which it seems logically out of place, by this process of head- 

 ing for the gateway of utterance with a double team, only one member of which 

 can and should get through ; it is as though the one that succeeds takes with it 

 the harness of the other. The Frenchman seemingly has in mind to say both / 

 fear my father will see me, and simultaneously I hope my father will not see 

 me; and actually allows himself to say / fear my father will not see me. Simi- 

 larly, with John is taller than James in mind, but also thinking the same 

 thought as James is not as tall as John, the spirit of the Romance language con- 

 structions tolerates John is taller than James is not. Independently of the 

 proof that may be brought to bear upon the correctness of this suggestion, it is 

 interesting to consider whether the mental tendency, that gives rise to lapses of 

 speech, may not also have been influential in shaping linguistic construction 

 and usage. 



