Pragmatic errors and frequency of disfluency in three year old nonstutterers

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship between pragmatic errors and the frequency and location of disfluency in the speech of three-year-old nonstutterers. Eight male and two female nonstutterers between the ages of 3:0 and 3:11 were selected as subjects for this study.

This study assessed the linguistic means of communicative intentions by categorizing responses according to Bore's (1978) classification of communicative speech acts in three-year-old nonstutterers. The investigator used carrier phrases and object stimuli attempting to elicit verbal responses from each subpart of the seven conversational speech act categories- requests, responses to requests, descriptions, statements, acknowledgements, organizational devices, and performatives. A minimum of fifty spontaneous utterances were recorded for each subject following the elicited speech sample. Disfluencies for each subject were identified according to Johnson's classification of disfluent speech (1961).

This investigation examined the relationship between pragmatic errors and the frequency of disfluency in a sample of ten three-year-old nonstutterers speech.

The following conclusions were drawn the basis of the results:

1. A significant relationship existed between the frequency of dis fluency, both percent disfluent words and percent disfluent utterances, and pragmatic errors in this sample of three-year-old nonstutterers speech.

2. No significant relationship existed between mean length of utterance and percent disfluent words in this sample of three-year-old nonstutterers.

3. Disfluencies in this sample of three-year-old nonstutterers' speech tended to occur in utterances that are pragmatically inappropriate both in Speaker/Initiator and Listener/Respondent conversational roles.

4. Three-year-old nonstutterers/ in this sample, tended to be more disfluent in the Speaker/Initiator conversational role, which comprised 36.6% of the total speech output, than in the Listener/Respondent role.

5. Three-year-old nonstutterers in the Listener/Respondent role tended to be most disfluent when answering wh-questions and least disfluent when answering yes/no questions and making declarative statements.

6. Three-year-old nonstutterers in the role of Speaker/Initiator were more disfluent when asking wh-questions and making declarative statements than when asking yes/no questions.