ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with speech understanding. The unit of speech processing is complex in terms of linguistic levels, flexible in terms of surface scope, and, quite small. The syntagma theory, on the other hand, provides a flexible basis for speech planning, and can accommodate units which differ in scope, including ones sufficiently small to explain how speech output can occur as the internal structure of the utterance is worked out by the speaker. However, the most elaborate classification of speech errors from a semantic and syntactic point of view appears to be Garrett's, and it is his terminology. Fromkin's, MacNeilage's, and Garrett's models have been motivated in part by an attempt to accommodate certain types of speech errors, and in part by an effort to provide a basis for intonation contours definable over clauses. However, such errors are rare, and it does not follow that the planning level of exchanges is a fixed property of the speech production process.
