Word-onsets and stress patterns: Speech errors in a tongue-twister experiment

Consonants in word onsets are more often than other consonants involved in interactional speech errors [8] [9]. This has been explained from the process of speech preparation [9] or from the higher degree of activation of initial versus other consonants [2], or from phonotactic constraints on speech errors [6]. Here we report a tongue-twister experiment showing (a) that words in each other’s immediate context produce more interactional errors if the words share their stress patterns than if they do not, (b) a considerable and highly significant word-onset effect that cannot be explained from phonotactic constraints on speech errors. The latter effect is explained as a frequency effect.