Distribution of stuttering in sentences: relationship to sentence length and clause position

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of sentence length and clause position on stuttering in the complex sentences of two languages--English and Kannada. Ten monolingual adult stutterers read 20 sets of sentences while 10 bilingual adult stutterers read 40 sets of sentences (20 sets in each of the two languages). Each set consisted of a short sentence and two long sentences. Results indicated that (a) a clause placed at the beginning of a sentence was stuttered more often than the same clause placed at the end of the sentence and more than the same clause as an isolated sentence; (b) a clause placed at the beginning of a sentence was stuttered more often than the same clause placed at the end of a sentence, irrespective of sentence length; and (c) stuttering occurred more often on the first clause of a sentence than on the second in proportion to the difference in word length between the two clauses. These results suggest that the occurrence of stuttering might be related to the demands that speech makes on motor planning, particularly at the beginning of sentences, and might have significance for the speech breakdown views on stuttering.