Lapsus

A lapsus (lapse, slip, error) is an involuntary mistake made while writing or speaking. According to Freud's early psychoanalytic theory, a lapsus represents a missed deed that hides an unconscious desire.

In literature there are a number of different lapsus depending on the mode of correspondence:

• lapsus linguae (pl. same): slip of the tongue.
• lapsus calami: slip of the pen. With the variation of lapsus clavis: slip of the typewriting
• lapsus manus: slip of the hand. Similar to lapsus calami.
• lapsus memoriae: slip of memory.

Types of slips of the tongue

Slips of the tongue can happen on any level:

• Syntactic - is instead of was.
• Phrasal slips of tongue - I'll explain this tornado later.
• Lexical/semantic - moon full instead of full moon.
• Morphological level - workings paper
• Phonological (sound slips) - flow snurries instead of snow flurries

Additionally, each of these five levels of error may take various forms:

• Anticipations: Where an early output item is corrupted by an element belonging to a later one. Thus "reading list" - "leading list".
• Perseverations: Where a later output item is corrupted by an element belonging to an earlier one. Thus "waking rabbits" - "waking wabbits".
• Deletions: Where an output element is somehow totally lost. Thus "same state" - "same sate".
• Shift: Moving a letter. Thus "black foxes" - "back floxes".
• Haplologies:^[1] half one word and half the other. Thus "stummy" instead of "stomach or tummy". (Smith, 2003)
• Pun

See also

• Freudian slip
• Speech error

Notes

1. ^ This is a different phenomenon to that described in the main article on haplologies, which involves the removal of identical consecutive syllables.