ABSTRACT
Imagine two speakers playing a dialogue game. Both speakers have a map of a fictional terrain full of pine trees, streams, goldmines, huts in which outlaws hide, waterfalls, and even crashed spacecrafts. On one of these maps a route is drawn and the first speaker, the instruction giver, is describing this route to his interlocutor, the instruction follower. The instruction follower attempts to draw the route on his own map (unaware that there are subtle differences between the two maps!). In this game, one can expect utterances such as (1) and (2):1
(1) Right. Follow the stream [pause]. Follow the path of the stream right down (2) Okay, well go between the gold line gold mine and the outlaws’ hideout
In (1) the speaker apparently deemed the description “stream” not specific enough. Speech is stopped, there is retracing to “follow”, and the more specific description “path of the stream” is produced. In (2), the speaker committed a phonological error. He said “line” instead of “mine”. Here, speech is retraced to the first constituent of the compound “goldmine”, and the error is repaired. In this case, the repair followed the error without a pause (as opposed to (1) in which there was a perceptible pause).
