Phonetic influences on stuttering in monolingual and bilingual stutterers

The difficulty stutterers might have with individual sounds was investigated with respect to two modes of speaking (oral reading versus spontaneous speech) and two languages (English versus Kannada). Ten monolingual and ten bilingual stutterers read 16 lists of words (8 in each language). Analysis of stuttering was made with respect to a three-way classification of sounds (vowels, voiceless consonants, and voiced consonants) as well as an eight-way classification (short vowels, long vowels, voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives, voiced stops, voiced fricatives, nasals, and semivowels). Analysis was made with respect to both word-initial and total stuttering. The results indicated that both monolingual and bilingual stutterers were more dysfluent on voiceless consonants and especially on voiceless fricatives, when total stuttering was considered. Results of the analysis of word-initial stuttering on an eight-way classification of sounds showed that the bilingual stutterers stuttered more on the nasal sounds. The results of the bilingual comparison indicated the possibility that the phonetic influences on stuttering might be dependent on the number of languages spoken by the subjects as well as the specific language in which the effects were observed.