Abstract
The present study was designed to answer essentially two questions : (1) Is there a significant tendency to stutter consistently on certain phonemes in the stutterings of a group of subjects in spontaneous speech before they become aware their own stuttering?
(2) If so, what phonetic features are most likely to “trigger off” stuttering?
The subjects were 29 stuttering children ranging in age from 2 years and 7 months t 9 years and 8 months, who had not yet developed keen awareness, a sense of problem, fears, nor avoidance behavior toward their stuttering. The speech sample was taken from the spontaneous speech for each subject, elicited from the play activities during clinical observations before the initiation of any therapeutic procedure that might influence results. The measurement and analysis of the consistency in stuttering and its phonetic features were limited to the initial sound of a linguistic unit of utterance.
The major findings were : (1) The individual differences in the frequency of stuttering were rather large, but 97-98% of the stutterings occured in relation to initial sounds. (2) The higher the frequency of stuttering was, the more increased the number of types of stuttered phonemes and scored the higher consistency index. (3) The stuttered phonemes with a significant consistency were those such as /n/, /k/, /t/, /h/, /m/, /b/, /a/, /o/, /i/. (4) The most common phonetic features for these consonant phonemes are [-Strident], and [-Continuant] except for the /h/ phoneme. In conclusion, stuttering must be, in part, a response to certain phonetic features which operate for each stutterer in relatively constant manner long before he becomes to regard them as difficult.
