stuttering in signed languages

[Martha Tyrone]

Hi Dorothea,

I was just going to write and mention what you labeled the boring alternative, though I don't find it boring myself. Quite the contrary, I think that a particular manifestation of a motor disorder that occurs in speech movements and sign movements (but not in knitting) leads to interesting questions about what's formationally similar (or distinct) across the two modalities, and about the structural aspects of sign and speech that make them particularly well-suited to language production. But I'm a phonetician, so I like formational structure. :-)

We have plenty of other lines of evidence that motor disorders can affect both speech and sign-- take for example, the research on signed language and Parkinson's disease-- but this doesn't imply that Parkinson's disease is a "language" disorder. In fact, the bulk of the evidence suggests that it isn't. 

There is some research indicating that hearing stutterers have movement initiation problems in producing non-linguistic, targeted limb movements. But those deficits are much milder than the speech-specific (or sign-specific) movement deficits.

Here are a few references if you're interested:
Tyrone, M.E. 2005. An Investigation of Sign Dysarthria. PhD Thesis. City University London. Department of Language and Communication Science.

Max L, Caruso AJ, Gracco VL. 2003. Kinematic analyses of speech, orofacial nonspeech, and finger movements in stuttering and nonstuttering adults, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46(1), 215-32.

Tyrone, M.E. 2007. Simultaneity in atypical signers: Implications for the structure of signed language. In M. Vermeerbergen et al. (eds.) Simultaneity in Signed Languages: Form and Function. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 317-336.

Tyrone, M.E. & Woll, B. To appear,  Jan. 2008. Palilalia in sign language. Neurology.

Cheers,
Martha

dcogill at une.edu.au wrote ..
> 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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----------------------
Dr. Martha Tyrone
Senior Research Scientist
Haskins Laboratories
300 George St., Suite 900
New Haven, CT 06511
1 203 865 6163 ext. 388
Fax: 1 203 865 8963
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