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In principle, we may distinguish two types of deviation from the
norm in a text:<br>
<ol>
<li>utterances containing slips of the tongue/pen</li>
<li>utterances which follow a pattern which is not part of the
norm.</li>
</ol>
(And here the specific status of the 'norm' does not seem to be
relevant: it may be a prescriptive norm that not everybody observes,
or may be the system which has been traditional for a relevant
portion of the speech community.)<br>
<br>
In theory, the difference between #1 and #2 is clear. Moreover, many
of us have an interest to make it in our analysis of corpora.
Deviations of type #1 are of interest for psycholinguistics, but
generally not for grammatical analysis. Deviations of type #2 may
cast some light on what is currently going on in the language.<br>
<br>
Given this, it is an interesting methodological problem in our
empirical work with corpora to make the distinction in practical
cases. Sometimes it has helped me to ask the speaker: 'Is that what
you intended to say?' This kind of question will help to purge the
text from occurrences of #1 (if one wants this [I do]). However, it
would not seem to be excluded that some speakers who are conscious
of a norm would react to such a question by additionally changing
utterances of type #2.<br>
<br>
I would be interested to learn whether you have other methods to
make the above distinction.<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p style="font-size:90%">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span></p>
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<td>+49/361/2113417</td>
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<td>E-Post:</td>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:christianw_lehmann@arcor.de">christianw_lehmann@arcor.de</a></td>
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<td>Web:</td>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu">https://www.christianlehmann.eu</a></td>
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