“A Voice that Would Sound All the Notes”: Sound and Regeneration in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Hebrew Revivalism

This chapter examines the symbolic valences of the Yiddish language in all three ecologies. As idioms of new life, of reordering, the very sounding of English or Hebrew speech on tape establishes a teleological direction in the narrative, foreshadowing different types of language conversion that the witness will undergo at some point in the story. Since oral and video media highlight accents and speech patterns, a tonal Yiddish undercurrent may have a significant impact on testimonial meaning, creating the impression that there is a source language, an alternate voice that haunts the one narrating. If Yiddish embodies a meaning-system that was lost, then quoting, recalling, or ignoring this tongue is a way for witnesses to enact the results of cultural transformation. The chapter then tackles the question of how Yiddish functions as a language of testimony at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first. Here, witnesses make the language into both an artifact of memory and a tool of expression. These Yiddish oral recordings constitute a new chapter in the history of Yiddish oral art.

The brain executive functions (EF) are crucial for various aspects of childrens’ development, as they stipulate control of cognitive processes and behavior. Speech development is one of the most important goals of preschool age and a defining predictor of successful school education. Both classical and contemporary studies stress relations between the given functions. In order to achieve an in-depth comprehension of the relations we have deepened a comparative neuropsychological research by means of complemented speech functions assessment (phonological process, verbal memory, motor program sequencing, grammatical and lexical speech design, planning of utterance) and conducted it targeting children aged 5–6 (n = 61, average age – 5.67 ± 0.33 y.) and 6–7 (n = 117, average age – 6.67 ± 0.29 y.). The research has revealed age-specific differences of the given age groups (verbal memory (р ≤ 0.002), comprehension of logical grammatical constructions (р 0.001), lexical (р = 0.031) and grammatical (р = 0.008) speech design, planning of utterance (р 0.001)). A coherency of speech and the state of EF development increases from 5–6 to 6–7 years old and is evident in various aspects of coherent speech (planning of utterance and its grammatical and, to a lesser degree, lexical speech design), verbal memory and verbal logical thinking; in phonological processing, motor program sequencing and comprehension of logical grammatical constructions, however, it is less evident as it is related to particular indexes, but still exists. The following research findings can be used to further voluntary regulated speech development and correction programs targeting senior preschoolers, as well as to develop voluntary regulation and control incorporating various speech components.

This study delves into phonological processes and changes in two distinct categories of loanwords in Japanese: gairaigo (foreign loanwords) and wasei eigo (Japanese-coined English words). Gairaigo are borrowings from foreign languages, predominantly English, while wasei eigo refers to words created within the Japanese language using English morphemes. The phonological adaptation of these loanwords undergoes various processes, e.g., assimilation, syllable structure, attenuation and strengthening, and neutralization. These processes are reflecting the dynamic nature of language contact and cultural exchange. In the case of gairaigo, phonological processes often involve the adaptation of sounds to conform to Japanese phonotactics and speech patterns. This may include the simplification or substitution of consonant clusters, vowel lengthening or shortening, and the incorporation of pitch accent patterns native to Japanese. Wasei eigo, on the other hand, undergoes phonological changes rooted in the native Japanese phonological system. Despite being constructed with English morphemes, wasei eigo words often exhibit phonetic features characteristic of Japanese. Moreover, these words may evolve over time through processes of sound change and assimilation, reflecting shifts in linguistic preferences and cultural influences. Overall, the phonological adaptation of gairaigo and wasei eigo showcases the linguistic borrowing, cultural assimilation, and the phonological systems of both source and target languages. Understanding these processes provides insights into the dynamic nature of language contact and the evolution of linguistic diversity in Japanese society.

A well-established set of language-specific norms for phonological development is imperative in the assessment of child speech sound difficulties. Currently, English norms are used clinically (in the absence of norms for local languages) to determine if a child displays age-appropriate, delayed or disordered speech patterns in Sinhala. This preliminary exploratory study aimed to document phonological processes observed in typically developing Sinhala-speaking children aged 3;0-6;11 (years;months). The Test of Articulation and Phonology-Sinhala, a picture-based assessment, was devised by the researchers and administered to 102 Sinhala-speaking children from three geographical locations (Colombo, Kandy, and Gampaha). The quantitative measures included percent consonants correct, percent vowels correct, and percent phonemes correct, while the qualitative analysis identified phonological processes. The quantitative results showed a marked influence of age on phoneme production accuracy with over 75% consonants correct by 3 years 6 months. The qualitative findings demonstrate common typical phonological processes and less common phonological processes in Sinhala compared to the speech pathology and cross-linguistic literature. Common phonological processes included fronting, stopping, and weak syllable deletion widely documented in linguistic and speech-language pathology literature. Many shared phonological processes were observed between Sinhala and Sri Lankan Tamil, the two main local languages, including fronting of retroflex sounds and lateralization. The phonological process of denasalization of prenasalized stops was observed in Sinhala, with no documentation of the phonological process found within the mainstream speech-language pathology literature. These findings reinforce the need to document and use language-specific typical phonological processes in Sinhala given the implications for early and accurate identification of speech difficulties and intervention. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27068173.

Children’s speech acquisition is influenced by universal and language-specific forces. Some speech error patterns (or phonological processes) in children’s speech are observed in many languages, but the same error pattern may have different effects in different languages. We aimed to explore phonological effects of the same speech error patterns across different languages, target audiences and discourse modes, using a novel method for large-scale corpus investigation. As an additional aim, we investigated the face validity of five different phonological effect measures by relating them to subjective ratings of assumed effects on intelligibility, as provided by practicing speech-language pathologists. Six frequently attested speech error patterns were simulated in authentic corpus data: backing, fronting, stopping, /r/-weakening, cluster reduction and weak syllable deletion—each simulation resulting in a “misarticulated” version of the original corpus. Phonological effects were quantified using five separate metrics of phonological complexity and distance from expected target forms. Using Swedish child-speech data as a reference, phonological effects were compared between this reference and a) child speech in Norwegian and English, and b) data representing different modes of discourse (spoken/written) and target audiences (adults/children) in Swedish. Of the speech error patterns, backing—the one atypical pattern of those included—was found to cause the most detrimental effects, across languages as well as across modes and speaker ages. However, none of the measures reflects intuitive rankings as provided by clinicians regarding effects on intelligibility, thus corroborating earlier reports that phonological competence is not translatable into levels of intelligibility.

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) covers a range of different methods for organizing, retrieving, and indexing knowledge from previous cases. Thus, this methodology has been successfully applied in medical domain, due to its human and intelligent properties to diagnose the case of a patient. In the speech therapy domain, an early identification of speech sound disorders allows the diagnosis and treatment of various pathologies and may aid clinical decision-making. However, there are few proposals that use knowledge modeling for supporting speech therapists. Moreover, there is no indicative in related literature of CBR being used for detecting the phonological processes (PPs) that may occur in pronunciations. So, in this paper, we present a case-based approach that uses machine learning for predicting PPs, aiming to provide clinical support in the identification of error patterns in children's speech. The method was evaluated through a speech corpus containing near one hundred thousand audio files, collected from pronunciation assessments performed by speech-language pathologists with more than 1,000 children. Using our knowledge base along with incremental learning, we obtained an accuracy of over 93% for predicting the PPs, showing the efficiency of our method for clinical decision support.

Objectives: This study aimed to compare the phonological processing abilities of four groups of early elementary school children: typically developing (TD) children, children with speech sound disorders (SSD only), children with speech sound disorders and co-occurring developmental dyslexia (SSD+DD), and children with developmental dyslexia (DD).Methods: The participants included 14 TD children, 4 children with SSD only, 10 children with SSD+DD, and 13 children with DD in the first to third grades. Phonological awareness was assessed at the syllable and phoneme levels. To examine phonological memory ability, nonword repetition, sentence repetition, and picture-pointing tasks were conducted. Rapid automatized naming was assessed using number and letter stimuli.Results: Significant differences were observed among the groups in all phonological processing subcomponent tasks. No significant differences were found among the TD, SSD only, and DD groups. Additionally, the TD and SSD only groups demonstrated similar performance. The SSD+DD group exhibited significantly lower performance across all tasks, indicating severe deficits in phonological processing.Conclusion: This study demonstrated that school-age children with SSD+DD show distinct vulnerabilities in phonological processing skills compared to children with SSD only or DD. Although establishing a clear causal relationship between deficits in phonological processing skills, speech production, and reading problems is challenging, this study suggests a complex interplay between these issues.

Speech patterns in kabuki make-up syndrome: A case report

Hearing developmental dyslexics and profoundly deaf individuals both have difficulties processing the internal structure of words (phonological processing) and learning to read. In hearing non-impaired readers, the development of phonological representations depends on audition. In hearing dyslexics, many argue, auditory processes may be impaired. In congenitally profoundly deaf individuals, auditory speech processing is essentially absent. Two separate literatures have previously reported enhanced activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus in both deaf and dyslexic adults when contrasted with hearing non-dyslexics during reading or phonological tasks. Here, we used a rhyme judgement task to compare adults from these two special populations to a hearing non-dyslexic control group. All groups were matched on non-verbal intelligence quotient, reading age and rhyme performance. Picture stimuli were used since this requires participants to generate their own phonological representations, rather than have them partially provided via text. By testing well-matched groups of participants on the same task, we aimed to establish whether previous literatures reporting differences between individuals with and without phonological processing difficulties have identified the same regions of differential activation in these two distinct populations. The data indicate greater activation in the deaf and dyslexic groups than in the hearing non-dyslexic group across a large portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus. This includes the pars triangularis, extending superiorly into the middle frontal gyrus and posteriorly to include the pars opercularis, and the junction with the ventral precentral gyrus. Within the left inferior frontal gyrus, there was variability between the two groups with phonological processing difficulties. The superior posterior tip of the left pars opercularis, extending into the precentral gyrus, was activated to a greater extent by deaf than dyslexic participants, whereas the superior posterior portion of the pars triangularis extending into the ventral pars opercularis, was activated to a greater extent by dyslexic than deaf participants. Whether these regions play differing roles in compensating for poor phonological processing is not clear. However, we argue that our main finding of greater inferior frontal gyrus activation in both groups with phonological processing difficulties in contrast to controls suggests greater reliance on the articulatory component of speech during phonological processing when auditory processes are absent (deaf group) or impaired (dyslexic group). Thus, the brain appears to develop a similar solution to a processing problem that has different antecedents in these two populations.

Adult dyslexic readers benefit less from visual input during audiovisual speech processing: fMRI evidence

The study focused on ascertaining the phonological processes that characterize the speech patterns of some selected preschool children. Data was collected from a sample of ten (10) pupils from ages 1-5 spanning the accepted age range for pupils to be in preschool in Ghana. Productions of the participants on words were recorded and later analyzed to determine the phonological processes present. It was found that the phonological processes that characterized the speech of the sample are syllable structure processes (e.g. cluster reduction); substitutions; and insertions. Further, it was found that age has a role to play in the presence of phonological processes in the speech of an individual. It was found however that some of the pupils were able to correctly articulate sounds when they were repeated to them. The study recommends that this study be extended to other school children in the country as well as teachers and other stakeholders towards ensuring the school-going children learn English pronunciation the right way.
 
 <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0897/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Phonological processing skills predict early reading development, but what underlies developing phonological processing skills? Phonological representations of 140 native Cantonese-speaking Chinese children (age 4–10) were assessed with speech gating, mispronunciation detection, and nonword repetition tasks; their nonverbal IQ, reading, and phonological processing were assessed with standard tests. Results indicated that even without explicit script-sound correspondence at the phonemic level in Chinese orthography, young Chinese speakers developed representations segmented at this level, and such representations were more fine-grained for older children. Further, the quality of kindergarteners’ phonological representations (specified by sensitivity to mispronunciation in lexical judgment) significantly predicted their emergent reading abilities, and this relation was fully mediated by phonological processing skills, with rapid naming showing the strongest mediation effect. Such mediation was no longer found with the primary-school sample, suggesting plausible developmental changes in the relations between phonological representations, phonological processing, and reading during early reading development.

Abstract: Comparing the linguistic and metalinguistic profiles in common developmental speech and language disorders is important in advancing our understanding of their clinical symptoms, as well as potentially informing the conceptual basis of novel interventions. The purpose of the present review article is summarizing linguistic, metalinguistic and psychiatric characteristics of children with speech sound disorder (SSD). Clinically and theoretically, it is important that we can understand different error pattern uses among children with SSD only and children with co-occurring SSD and language impairment (LI). Identifying differences in error pattern use will help to discovering the underlying causes of the different types of patterns. In comparison with children with SSD, children with co-occurring SSD and LI use certain patterns more frequently that suggest more global linguistic deficits. The early identification of children who are at risk for development of co-occurring SSD and LI as well as later literacy problems needs to distinguish these patterns. Identification of speech error patterns and their underlying cognitive-linguistic processing deficits will contribute to diagnosis of children at risk of co-occurring SSD and LI and reading problems. Mounting studies have reported that children with SSD, with and without language impairment have differences in phonological processing, literacy skills, and speech production patterns. Children with both speech sound and language disorders are likely to have more severe literacy problems than those with isolated speech sound disorders. In addition, this paper focuses on the comorbidity between psychiatric disorders specially attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and SSD.

Literature on articulatory acquisition has shown that children master majority of the speech sounds of their language by 3.6 years of age. Various computerized assessment tools for identification of speech sound errors or phonological processes in children have been developed in English. In the recent past, attempts have been made in India also to develop such quick screening tools. This paper introduces such a tool named Computerized Assessment of Phonological Processes in Malayalam (CAPP-M). Based on the articulatory acquisition norms obtained from 120 typically developing Malayalam speaking children in the age range of 2-3 years, the word stimuli were selected for the software tool. An earlier developed similar software for 3.0-3.6 years (Merin and Sreedevi, 2010) was appended to this tool to accommodate a larger age range; ie, upto 3.6 years. Installation of Adobe AIR is mandatory to run this software which enables developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash® and Flex technologies, and ActionScript® to build web applications that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser. The test tool provides quantified list of phonological processes in each child tested. Further the sensitivity of the software was tested on children with hearing impairment and children with mental retardation matched for language age. The tool was found to be sensitive to the speech productions of children with these communication disorders also. Thus, CAPP-M can be a quick screening tool for automatic and easy analysis of the speech sound error patterns in children with Malayalam as their native language.

The speech error patterns of seven Putonghua-speaking children with speech difficulties, who received no clinical intervention, were assessed twice over an interval of about 11 months. Qualitative measures (phonetic inventory, phonemic inventory, and phonological process use) and quantitative measures (severity score and inconsistency rating) were used. One child's phonology was within normal limits initially, but showed characteristics of delayed development at the second assessment. Of the three children presented with delayed acquisition at the initial assessment, one child had attained age-appropriate phonology at the second assessment, while the other two children remained delayed. Two children who consistently used phonological error patterns atypical of normal development and one child whose speech was characterized by inconsistency showed little change in the number and type of errors made. The theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed. It is argued that children with different underlying deficits might follow different paths of development. Delayed phonological development may occur at any stage of children's phonological acquisition and spontaneously resolve later, while disordered phonological development may start at speech onset and be resistant to changes, due to deficits in the speech processing chain. The data support the need for differential diagnosis and treatment of children with speech disorders.