The effect of lexical constraints on spontaneous stuttered speech

Abstract

In earlier research with stutterers it appeared that syntactic planning is reflected in the pattern of stuttering: in spontaneous speech there are more stuttered function words than in read-out speech and their frequency is higher in the beginning of a clause than at the end. The aim of the present research is to investigate by means of varying lexical constraints, whether stuttering can also reflect the effort needed for lexical processes in sentence planning. Ten stutterers were asked to describe 14 series of three pictures, with a few written lexical words in each picture. The task was to use these words in the utterance. It appeared that in this task (experimental condition) the frequency of stuttered words is higher than in speech based on pictures without words, normal spontaneous speech and read-out speech (control conditions). It was observed that in the experimental condition more stuttered lexical words occurred at the beginning of a clause than at the end. Therefore, we conclude that in active speech production not only syntactic structures but also lexical items can be planned in a unit (‘lexical planning unit’) as large as a clause. It is assumed that freedom of word-choice is related to the pattern of stuttering and that a limitation of this freedom can increase the frequency of stuttering.