UNRAVELING THE LINGUISTIC LOCUS OF STUTTERING FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD: A LONGITUDINAL & POSITIONAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

For decades, the locus of stuttering disfluencies has been framed by a binary distinction between function and content words. While this division offered early traction, it now risks constraining deeper inquiry into the structure-sensitive demands that shape fluency development. This study re-examines the linguistic locus of stuttering by integrating grammatical role, utterance position, and developmental trajectory, moving beyond static categories to consider how vulnerabilities unfold across an utterance. It challenges the assumption that lexical class alone governs fluency patterns, proposing instead that the interaction between grammatical role and distributed planning demands more precisely account for persistence and recovery. Longitudinal analyses suggest that while function word stuttering remains stable early on, the interaction between finer-grained grammatical role and position patterns offers stronger differentiation between trajectories. By tracing these pressures, this work lays the foundation for a more dynamically structured model of early stuttering development.