| Abstract | This preliminary study was a cross-linguistic analysis of the speech disfluencies of a Mandarin-English speaking school-age child who stutters (chronological age 7;2), who was considered to be a simultaneous, balanced bilingual speaker. This case study answered the question, are disfluency rates in the following areas similar in Mandarin and English in a bilingual child who stutters: stuttering and total disfluency frequencies, proportions of stuttering-like and other disfluencies, specific disfluency types, and disfluency clusters? Digital video recordings of the participant's connected speech in both languages were recorded at onset and termination of therapy. Samples in English with a clinician (2590 intended syllables; 47 minutes) and Mandarin with his mother (5242 syllables; 55 minutes) were collected during story retell and interactions while playing games. Disfluencies were coded by a bilingual Mandarin-English SLP and the author, and inter- and intra-judge reliability was completed for 20% of randomly selected portions of the recordings. Stuttering-like, clusters, and a variety of disfluency types were present in both languages, and frequencies of these behaviors were compared in Mandarin and English. Results are discussed in terms of possible linguistic and contextual influences. |
