Results indicated that both monolingual and bilingual stutterers were more dysfluent on voiceless consonants; the bilingual stutterers stuttered more on the nasal sounds; and phonetic influences on stuttering might be dependent on the number of languages spoken as well as specific language in which the effects were observed. (Author/CL)

This study attempted to empirically demonstrate the validity of a twofold classification of speech disfluency in adult stutterers. Instrumentation and procedures permitting reliable identification and coding of 9 disfluency behaviors were developed and applied to monologues of 180 adult stutterers. Factor analyses supported the two-factor…

Testing of 17 adult and 25 adolescent stutterers during a 12-month to 24-month postintensive treatment phase revealed that 69% of subjects maintained satisfactory fluency on surprise phone calls at home/work and 80% of subjects rated their speech fluency as good or fair on the Speech Performance Questionnaire. (Author/JDD)

A study of 10 typical women investigated the effect of fingerspelling task length on temporal characteristics and perceived naturalness of speech produced during simultaneous communication. Speech produced during simultaneous communication was rated as less natural and demonstrated increased interword interval, diphthong, work, and sentence…

Ten mothers and 20 children, aged 5 and 10 years, were examined to determine the time at which velopharyngeal port opening began in /dVn/ syllables and velopharyngeal port closing reached completion in /nVd/ syllables. Adults and children nasalized most vowels in the /dVn/ context and the /nVd context. (Author/JDD)

A study examined the long- and short-term spectral characteristics of speech simultaneously recorded at the ear and at a reference microphone position. Twenty adults and 26 children (ages 2-4) produced 9 short sentences. Children's vocal levels were low in amplitude at both the ear and at the microphone position. (Contains references.) (CR)

Describes some of the difficulties involved in conducting language evaluation tests in Edinburgh, Scotland. Reports some results of a pilot study. (RL)

Demonstrates that the contextual probability of lexical items in a continuous sample of spontaneous speech, as measured by the predictability of words in context, is related to word frequency. (Author/RL)

Discusses the literature on interference as the cause of errors in second language speech. A study is reported which shows that interference by the native language is most often the factor responsible for the largest number of mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. (Author/AMH)

Compares language patterns in two moderately aphasic adults over age 60 with left hemisphere damage, using measures of lexical richness (word frequency). Argues for the usefulness of evaluating patients on conversational speech and the role of extensive linguistic analysis in prognosis and therapy. The discussion considers both qualitative and…