Early stutterings: some aspects of their form and distribution

The speech of five stutterers ranging in age from 3 years, 10 months to 5 years, 7 months was analyzed to determine the types and loci of stutterings. Word repetition was the most frequent feature in three cases and one of the two predominant features in the remaining two cases. Almost without exception, word repetitions occurred at the beginning of syntactic units. A greater proportion of stutterings of all types appeared on the initial words of sentences or clauses than on the other words. In most cases proportionately more function words than control words were stuttered, as were more monosyllabic than polysyllabic words--just the reverse of the usual pattern in older children and adults. The tendency of older stutterers to have more difficulty on initial consonants than initial vowels appeared in only one case. The findings on the properties of stuttered words were interpreted to mean that word-bound factors as such have little influence on the loci of early stutterings. The results as a whole were related to the hypothesis that early stuttering represents mainly a type of difficulty in either the formulation or the execution of syntactic units.