The BENEPHIDIRE program
Résumé
We intend, via this presentation to present our on-going Multifold Research Program named BeNePhiDiRe (French for “Stuttering : Neurological Imagery, Phonetic Analysis, designed for Diagnosis and Rehabilitation”), which is funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the French Caisse Nationale de Solidarité pour l’Autonomie (CNSA). The program aims at finding out neurological and phonetic markers for stuttering. Regarding the Neurological fold of our Program, we will focus on tracking the Frontal Aslant Tract and its different or not anatomical aspects according to the different varieties of fluency control (PWS, Persons who had stuttered, Fluent persons) (see Kemerdere et al., 2015 for instance). The phonetic studies follow Didirková’s (2016) works dealing with speech and manual gestures produced by persons who stutter (henceforth PWS). More precisely, we aim at observing articulatory and acoustic specificities by PWS with electromagnetic articulography (EMA) and IRM data. Data obtained in the phonetic studies will be used to carry out an application able to identify stuttering-like disfluencies. The project involves a multidisciplinary team including researchers in linguistics, computer science and neurology on the one hand, and, on the other hand, speech-language therapists specialized in stuttering. First results dealing with speech produced by PWS show that several types of articulatory patterns have been observed during disfluencies. These patterns can be divided in two categories: those which are carried out with slight vertical movements or an immobilization of most articulators, and those produced with movements. Notice that these different patterns are present for blocks, prolongations and repetitions, suggesting that the nomenclature generally used to describe disfluencies does not reflect the articulatory behavior (see Didirková et al.. 2019; 2020). Furthermore, a study arising from our program and presented during this conference (Dodane & Didirková, 2020) reveals atypical manual gestures during stuttering-like disfluencies. References DIDIRKOVÁ I. (2016), Parole, langues et disfluences : une étude linguistique et phonétique du bégaiement. Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, 412 p. DIDIRKOVÁ I., LE MAGUER S., GBEDAHOU D., HIRSCH F. (2019) Articulatory behaviour during disfluencies in stuttered speech. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 2019, Melbourne (Australia), 2991-2995. DIDIRKOVÁ I., LE MAGUER S., HIRSCH F. (2020) An articulatory study of differences and similarities between stuttered disfluencies and non-pathological disfluencies. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, accepted DODANE C., DIDIRKOVÁ I. (submitted) Speech-gesture relationship during disfluencies in stuttering and non-stuttering French adults. 12th Oxford Dysfluency Conference, Oxford, UK. KEMERDERE, R., DE CHAMPFLEUR, N.M., DEVERDUN, J., COCHEREAU, J., MORITZ-GASSER, S., HERBET, G. & DUFFAU, H. (2016), Role of the Left Frontal Aslant Tract in Stuttering: A Brain Stimulation and Tractographic Study. Journal of Neurology, 263(1):157-167.