Lexical tone and stuttering loci in Mandarin: Evidence from preschool children who stutter

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between stuttering loci and lexical tone in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers. Conversational samples from 20 Taiwanese children who stutter (CWS; M = 4:9; range = 3:2–6:4) were analysed for frequency and type of speech disfluency and lexical tone associated with stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs). Results indicated that SLDs were significantly more likely to be produced on Mandarin syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 syllables compared to syllables carrying either Tone 1 or Tone 2. Post-hoc analyses revealed: (1) no significant differences in the stuttering frequencies between Tone 1 and Tone 2, or between Tone 3 and Tone 4, and (2) a higher incidence of stuttering on syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 embedded in conflicting (as opposed to compatible) tonal contexts. Results suggest that the higher incidence of stuttering on Mandarin syllables carrying either Tone 3 or 4 may be attributed to the increased level of speech motor demand underlying rapid F0 change both within and across syllables.

• Lexical tone
• Mandarin
• preschoolers
• stuttering loci

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the graduate students and the speech-language pathologist from Taiwan on this project, Shanju Lin and Yuting Huang, for their assistance with reliability measures for disfluency coding and tone coding. We would also like to thank our colleagues Tim Arbisi-Kelm, Bryan Brown, Julia Hollister and Naomi Hertsberg from the Stuttering Research Lab at the University of Iowa for their suggestions for this project.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notice of Correction:

Changes have been made to this article since its original online publication date of 30 September 2014.