Stuttering and lexical category in adult Arabic speakers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test whether the content and function word dichotomy of speech disfluency found in English-speaking adults who stutter (AWS) was evident in a language other than English. A group of adult Arabic-speaking AWS were sampled across spontaneous speaking, oral reading, and single-word naming tasks. Moments of disfluency were identified and examined in regard to lexical category. Results indicated no significant differences in the amount of disfluency occurring on content and function words. The production of combined content-function words, a unique feature of the Arabic language, was associated with a high level of disfluency. The linguistic bases of stuttering are discussed in regard to language-specific influences.

Exchange of disfluency with age from function to content words in Brazilian Portuguese speakers who do and do not stutter

“…Some studies (Abdalla et al, 2010;Au-Yeung et al, 2003;Dworzynski et al, 2003;Howell et al, 1999) report a higher incidence of stuttering frequency on content words than on function words, whereas others report no differences (Koopmans, Slis, & Rietveld, 1991;Wingate, 1967Wingate, , 1979. These controversial findings in respect to differences in stuttering frequency on content and function words for people who stutter may in part be due to methodological issues such as the use of spontaneous speech versus reading tasks.…”

“…Although a few authors have investigated this shift in stuttering from content to function words in languages other than Englishe.g. German, Spanish and Arabic (Abdalla, Robb, & Al-Shatti, 2010;Au-Yeung et al, 2003;Dworzynski et al, 2003) there is little cross-linguistic data on stuttering in general and, in particular, on stuttering in Brazilian Portuguese (Juste & Andrade, 2006, 2011.…”

“…syllables that start with a vowel have to have an onset added) and sentence position factors (the German language is fairly inflexible in its word order; this is mainly related to verbs where the finite verb and past participle have rigid positions). Abdalla et al (2010) investigated whether the content and function word dichotomy of speech disfluency found in English-speaking adults who stutter was evident in a group of Arabic-speaking adults who stutter. The authors analyzed the distribution of speech disruptions in different speaking tasks (spontaneous speech, oral reading and single-word naming).…”

“…new words are constantly evolving, thus expanding the category. Function words, however, belong to a closed linguistic set, and as such new words are rarely added to this category (Abdalla et al, 2010).…”

Stuttering characteristics of German–English bilingual speakers

“…Since then, our understanding of the complexity of semantic and syntactical influences on fluent and dysfluent speech has much improved (Wingate, 2003). The fact that some words have combined elements of function and content words further complicates the issue (Abdalla, Robb, & Al-Shatti, 2010). Hence, the content-function dichotomy, while providing a fairly applicable and straightforward tool for the analysis of moments of stuttering in relationship to the maturity of a language system (as defined by the content-function word dichotomy), is limited in its informative value.…”