Disfluency characteristics of Kannada-English bilingual adults who stutter

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate whether stuttering frequency differs between two languages in Kannada-English bilingual adults who stutter. The second purpose was to compare the relationship between grammatical class (content-function word dichotomy) and stuttering frequency in two languages. In addition, we also examined whether types of disfluencies vary between content and function words in two languages. Twenty-five bilingual adults who stutter that were proficient in both languages (mean age=22.5 years, SD=3.0) participated in the present study. Spontaneous speech samples were recorded in both Kannada and English and stuttering frequencies were calculated in both languages and for each type of grammatical category. Further, different types of disfluencies were noted for each type of grammatical category in both the languages. Results revealed significantly greater stuttering in L2 (English) compared to L1 (Kannada). In both the languages, significantly higher content words were stuttered compared to function words. When the comparison was done between two languages, significantly higher content words were stuttered in L1 compared to L2, whereas significantly higher function words were stuttered in L2 compared to L1. The types of disfluencies did not vary between content and function words and between two languages. Present results suggest that frequency and other aspects of stuttering may depend on the proficiency of the language.