Stuttering and lexical category in adult Arabic speakers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test whether the content and function word dichotomy of speech disfluency found in English-speaking adults who stutter (AWS) was evident in a language other than English. A group of adult Arabic-speaking AWS were sampled across spontaneous speaking, oral reading, and single-word naming tasks. Moments of disfluency were identified and examined in regard to lexical category. Results indicated no significant differences in the amount of disfluency occurring on content and function words. The production of combined content-function words, a unique feature of the Arabic language, was associated with a high level of disfluency. The linguistic bases of stuttering are discussed in regard to language-specific influences.

Keywords:

• Arabic
• adults
• disfluency
• stuttering
• content words
• function words

Acknowledgements

We extend our appreciation to the adults who participated in this research and to clinicians at the Salem Al-Ali Center for Speech and Hearing, Kuwait for assisting in recruiting and testing candidates for the study. We are grateful to Dalal Bosakher, Marwa Al-Rahmani, Shamma Al-Naham, Haya Al-Hashem, and Kholoud Al-Zeer, senior students at the Communication Sciences department, Kuwait University for help with data collection and transcription. We thank Professor Abbas Ben Mamoun for useful discussions of Arabic morphosyntax and Dr Khawla Aljenaie for comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Notes

1.  The effect size estimator (Δ) proposed by Glass (1976) was used in the present study. Effect size was calculated as the difference between the first and second mean value divided by the standard deviation of the first mean. The index is a pure, ‘dimensionless’ number expressed in terms of the standard deviation. That is, the effect size is some specific, non-zero value in the population. The larger this value, the greater the degree to which the phenomenon under study is manifested (Cohen, 1988). For example, an effect size of 1.0 indicates that the second mean exceeded the first mean by more than one standard deviation.