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From: Anelise Bohnen
Date: 11 Oct 2011
Time: 22:47:02 -0500
Remote Name: 189.63.133.13
Hi Elise, interesting question! I did look into these matters. I actually still have the raw data about the initial phonemes of all the 1328 stuttered words studied. I wanted to know not only about the most frequent phonemes stuttered on, but also their intrinsic characteristics such as voice x voiceless, short x long… But I was advised against analyzing them due to the "frequency of use" factor. That is: if there are more words beginning with consonants in the language and there are more consonants than vowels (and in Brazilian Portuguese there are 19 consonants, 13 vowels and 2 semivowels!), probably we will find more stutterings in consonants as well. Also, if there are more words initiating with /p/ than with /z/, there will be a tendency of finding more stutterings on initial /p/. The difficult part of this is to find a real frequency of use of all phonemes in Brazilian Portuguese, and I guess that it is the same in most languages. Languages change with time. My clinical experience tells me that each client has his/her own stuttering. I have clients that stutter more in consonants, others that complain about clusters or vowels. So, when planning therapeutic procedures, a clinician has to take this information into consideration. Thank you. Anelise