An acoustic analysis of syllable duration in short Thai phrases was conduct
ed to evaluate the effects of focal brain damage on the control of speech t
iming. Almost all 35 of the subjects had participated in each of four previ
ous companion studies: 13 left-brain-damaged (6 nonfluent aphasics; 7 fluen
t aphasics), 14 right-brain-damaged patients, and 8 normal controls. Somewh
at surprisingly, results revealed relatively normal timing patterns in 3 sy
llable phrases in all subject groups. A comparison of the current study and
the four others, however, led us to conclude that Thai-speaking nonfluent
aphasics exhibit a speech timing deficit regardless of the linguistic level
of representation, whereas timing deficits in fluent aphasics appear to be
restricted to units larger than a syllable. Speech timing, on the other ha
nd, appears to be intact across the board in right-brain-damaged individual
s. Findings are brought to bear on theories of temporal control in brain-da
maged patients.