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From: Susan Felsenfeld
Date: 16 Oct 2007
Time: 11:19:04 -0500
Remote Name: 149.152.191.253
Hi Kate- You are right that some African languages do have phonetic and phonemic systems that are quite different from English. Some languages, for example, use "clicks" as phonemes, which, from a fluency assessment perspective, could pose quite a challenge. Fortunately for me, the languages in Burkina Faso had phonologies that seemed,to my ear, to be rather similar to Romance languages. These languages did not happen to contain clicks, for example. Therefore, it was not as great a challenge to identify stuttering moments as it might otherwise have been. In terms of the types of "core behaviors," I was curious about this myself. I heard part-word repetitions, prolongations, and blocks across speakers. I also heard interjections (e.g., "uh"). I'm less able to comment on other behaviors such as word repetitions, although I would predict that they occur. I asked some PWS I met about word avoidances, and yes these are also reported. So, in terms of overt speech behaviors, it looks like stuttering in these languages is not much different from English and other languages for which we have data. Thanks for this interesting question! Susan