Fw: [SLLING-L] stuttering in signed languages

Mon Nov 5 09:38:49 UTC 2007

Hi all,

For your information, from a colleague of mine.

Best wishes,

Mieke Van Herreweghe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Van Borsel" <john.vanborsel at UGent.be>
To: <Mieke.VanHerreweghe at UGent.be>
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: [SLLING-L] stuttering in signed languages

> Please find in attachment some information that may help.
> Best regards,
> John Van Borsel
>
> ----- Doorgestuurd bericht van dcogill at une.edu.au -----
>     Datum: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:34:32 +1000 (EST)
>       Van: dcogill at une.edu.au
> Antwoorden aan:A list for linguists interested in signed languages
> <slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
>  Onderwerp: [SLLING-L] stuttering in signed languages
>       Aan: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>
> Hi there,
>
> thanks so much to Donald, Debbie, Ingvild, Sarah, Theresa and also Jenny
> Webster, from whom I've just received permission to add her post to the
> general pool - as follows -
>
>> Hi Dorothea:
>> In the first BSL course I took several years ago, there was a hearing
> woman who stuttered in her speech, and was excited to learn BSL because
> she thought it would give her a way to communicate without stuttering.
> Unfortunately, she did stutter (or what the British call 'stammer') in
> BSL
>> as well.  She dropped out of the course after about a year.  Her hands
> would shake when she signed, and she would have a lot of false starts -
> really similar to vocal stuttering.
>> Best wishes
>> Jenny Webster
>> Research associate / PhD student
>> University of Central Lancashire
>> Preston, UK
>
>  So here are already six examples of stuttering-like patterns in signing,
> or at the very least accompanying speech+signing. Donald Grushkin and
> Sarah both describe signers who had blinking and twitching during the
> stuttering too, so typical of many speech stutterers. Plus there's a
> thesis that adds more (though unfortunately due to the data-gathering
> method there were no individual cases that I can add to the pool here,
> just a conclusion that 'stuttering happens for signers too'). It's
> certainly enough to make one reluctant to keep happily repeating the
> statement that "stuttering is a speech problem, not a language problem" -
> though I don't know what one WOULD positively say instead.
>
> Just thinking about possible scenarios, in an effort to figure out what
> one would expect to see from a given underlying cause, and how different
> scenarios would fit the posted examples - just having a little speculate,
> in other words...
>
> certainly for most of us on slling-list, the most interesting scenario
> would be, stuttering is something that affects LANGUAGE, before it gets
> associated with any particular motor system.  The only case in our
> mini-pool (wading pool? :-)) of shared potential cases here that wouldn't
> fit that would be Theresa Smith's possible Californian man; someone
> doesn't stutter in ASL even though he stutters in English. And we could
> say, hypothetically, "well, for him, a late learner and hearing person,
> perhaps his ASL is not full and grammatical and fluent enough to be really
> mentally coded by him as language - whereas conversely, in Jenny Webster's
> stuttering English speaker learning BSL, we could hypothesise that she's
> thinking in English still, and this is jamming her signed production, just
> as stuttering jams speech-accompanying gesture too, according to David
> McNeill (the gesture chap at Chicago U)." But Donald Grishkind's Gallaudet
> student who stuttered while simultaneously signing and speaking would fit
> OK, and so would Ingvild Roald's chap who even 'stuttered' when typing on
> the computer.
>
> At the other extreme, there's a very boring possible alternative
> scenario(well, boring for most of us, I would suppose). I'm ashamed to say
> this only occurred to me after I posted my initial enquiry; what if, yes,
> people stutter in signed languages, but they actually 'stutter' in all
> sorts of movement patterns?  Then it's not a language thing, not a speech
> thing, not a sign thing, but a general 'jamming up' of motor movements
> that happens to some people - perhaps, just in some class of their rapid,
> highly -rehearsed, complex motor movements, the class of movement that's
> affected varying from person to person? Deborah Chen Pilcher, in that
> thesis you referred me to, Geoff Whitebread mentions in passing a case of
> someone who had stutter-like symptoms on playing the flute!  Very rapid,
> highly-complex movement....
>
> If this is the case - if one can have a knitting-stutter, or a
> crochet-stutter, or a piano-stutter (and the only reason we don't usually
> is because people with the problem don't continue with trying to knit!) -
> then you'd think that people researching stuttering would know of the
> phenomenon. I will try to find out, and if I get an intelligible reply
> from a stutter-researcher, I will report back. Meanwhile, though, fingers
> crossed it's not true. The first scenario is so much more interesting.
>
> Dorothea.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> ----- Einde doorgestuurd bericht -----
>

Prof. dr. Mieke Van Herreweghe
English Department
Ghent University
Rozier 44
9000 Ghent
Belgium
tel. +32 - 9 - 264 37 90
fax +32 - 9 - 264 41 79
Have a look at: http://gebaren.ugent.be
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