Stuttering In The Speech Of English And Ekegusii Bilinguals: A Case Study Of Two Bilingual Adults

Abstract

The present study sought to investigate stuttering in the speech of English and Ekegusii bilingual adults. It is a case study of two bilingual adults’ oral production in both languages It tested the following hypotheses: a) In either language, content words will be more frequently stuttered on than function words. b) Initial consonants will be more frequently stuttered than initial vowels. c) Words longer than three syllables will be more frequently stuttered than shorter ones. d) Words in sentence-initial position will be more frequently stuttered on than those in medial or final position. e) There will be more instances of stuttering in English than in Ekegusii. To collect data for analysis the subjects were engaged (by the researcher) in discussion on topical issues. They were recorded using a video recorder and later transcribed for analysis. Percentages were used to test all the hypotheses. Hypothesis (a) was not proved in the case of English : 53.06% function words were stuttered on against 46.94% content words in English but it was proved in the case of Ekegusii: (83.06%) content words against (15.83%) function words. Hypothesis (b) was proved: 56.76% in the case of word initial consonant sounds against 40.54% word initial vowel sounds in English. In Ekegusii it was not proved: 76.6% in the case of word initial vowel sounds against 23% in the case of word initial consonant sounds. Hypothesis (c) was not proved: 82.69% in the case of short words against 15.38% long words in English. In Ekegusii it was proved: 62.5% long words against 29.17% short words. Hypothesis (d) was proved: 11.54% in the case of pre-utterance position against; 7.69%, 1.92%, 3.85% and 7.69% in the case of; after a connective, before a noun in object position, before the verb phrase and within the verb phrase respectively in English. While in Ekegusii stuttering occurred most often on the first-person marker which can also be considered the beginning of an utterance. Hypothesis (e) was not proved: Overall, more stuttering occurred in Ekegusii than English. This can be attributed to the agglutinative nature of the former.