Lexical and syntactic context and stuttering

Research on stuttering has concentrated on explaining dysfluencies by factors that are inherent to words, such as their semantic content or phonological characteristics. This has allowed speech to be analysed irrespective of the context in which it occurs. Research on fluent speakers has shown that conversational context affects whether speech is produced fluently or not. These studies have shown that the lexical items and syntactic structures (that other speakers engaged in conversation use) influence the fluency of speakers. In addition, fluent speech is disrupted when planning for forthcoming words and syntactic structures is taking place. In this article it is argued that such word-external factors could potentially also be triggers which lead to words being stuttered.