Abstract
Stuttering is routinely described as a difficulty in saying words or sounds. Although stuttering obviously does involve sounds and words, characterizing the disorder in either of these terms misleads in opposite directions. Stuttering is most appropriately identified as a syllabic phenomenon, an intra-syllabic event—essentially because it is expressed at the level of the syllable. The denouement of the analyses presented in Chapter 5 was the isolation of syllable-initial position and linguistic stress as the focal “language factors” associated with stuttering. Syllable-initial position and linguistic stress are syllabic phenomena.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Footnotes
These, and other, important distinctions between consonants and vowels will be incorporated in the discussion in Chapter 9_.
One implication of coarticulation is that, contrary to long-standing belief, stutters cannot be associated with phones as invariant entities because phones are produced as part of a sequence. Evidently this is particularly true of syllable-initial phones—which are the phones that are involved in stutters.
Even though, holistically, the initial consonant(s) have a perceptually and psychologically real independent identity.
For instance, MacKay used “initial consonant group” and “vocalic group.”
The following terms have been used to specify sequential parts of Hockett’s “all that follows:” peak or vowel nucleus; coda or final consonant (or cluster); and appendix or inflectional suffix. See MacKay (1972); Halle and Vergnaud (1980).
Justifiable on, among other grounds, the fact of the frequency with which monosyllabic words occur in ordinary discourse.
See, for example, Fromkin (1973b, 1980).
Hockett’s example: “Let us flee, said the fly, so they flew through the flaw in the flue.”
Partly different, yet evidently partially duplicating.
This characterization of a “fault line” is borrowed from the field of geology where it refers to a crack in the earth’s crust, not always evident at the surface, that penetrates deep into the underlying structure.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 Marcel E. Wingate
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wingate, M.E. (1988). The Fault Line. In: The Structure of Stuttering. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9664-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9664-6_6
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4615-9666-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-9664-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive