A Study of The Relationship Between Disfluency Behaviors and The Linguistic Features of Verbs in Turkish Speaking Stuttering Children Between The Ages of 3-7,5

The purpose of this study was to investigate how linguistic features of verbs affect on disfluency behaviors, relationship among the variables of linguistic features, relationship between stuttering frequency, mean length of utterance and the variables of linguistic features in 3-7.5 year-old stuttering children.The research is in the form of the descriptive and correlational research. The sample of this research consist of the 8 children that have visited Anadolu University Research, Practice and Education Center for Speech and Language Disorders and Ankara University Special Education and Research Center for stuttering disorders and diagnosed with stuttering. The data was based on the audio records of spontaneous speech of the children. Verbs have been classified as main or subordinate clause verbs and disfluencies are identified in the roots and suffixes of the verbs. The relationships between MLU, stuttering frequency of the children and the location of the verbs in the sentence have been studied as well as the location of the disfluency in the verb.The results show that disfluency behaviors largely occur in the root of the verbs and on main verbs. Percentage of stuttering in the verbs was related to percentage of stuttering in the root of verbs. Relationship between stuttering in the root and suffix was significant but negative. Stuttering frequency was related to clause types but there was no relationship between where the disfluency behaviors occurred in verbs. Mean length of utterance was related to only stuttering in the root of verbs but the relationship was negative.Key words: Stuttering, verbs, morphological structure, clause types