Initial Word Position Research Articles

APPLICATION OF THE PHONETIC PLACEMENT METHOD FOR ARTICULATION DISORDERS IN CHILDREN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

Speech intelligibility is an important factor in verbal communication. Children with intellectual disabilities with intellectual disabilities will face difficulties in communicating due to reduced speech intelligibility. This condition will affect social skills, mental mental state, and academics. Articulatory misplacement is one of the factor that makes difficulties in articulation accuracy. Method: Using a single subject experiment, with a one group pretest-posttest design. The participant was a 7-year-old girl with articulation disorder /m/ in the initial position of the word and had never received speech therapy. Data collection was conducted through interviews with the client's parents, direct observation of the client, tests, and document studies. Speech therapy was conducted for 10 sessions with an emphasis on bilabial phonetic placement exercises. Perceptual assessment by comparing the ability to produce /m/ in the initial position of the word before and after therapy. Results: In the evaluation assessment, there has been no improvement in the client's ability to produce /m/ in the initial position of the word. Conclusion: The use of the phonetic placement method to improve the ability to produce /m/ in the initial position of words has not been effective for children with intellectual disabilities in this case. Suggestion: It may be possible to increase the frequency of therapy to see more significant improvement, and adjust the therapy materials.

Consoantes róticas duplas em contexto inicial de palavra nas cantigas medievais: casos de hipossegmentação

This article reflects on the cases of hyposegmentation that involve double rhotic consonants in an initial context of words and clitics in Ancient Portuguese (AP). The objective of the study is to map, in the troubadour era, the hyposegmentation cases of the rhotic consonant in the initial word position. The mapping indicates a slight variation in the spelling of words that begin with this consonant and the lack of blanks is systematically found in the context of the presence of clitic followed by the studied consonant.

Word-Final Disfluencies in a School-Age Child: Beneath the Tip of the Iceberg.

Purpose Disfluencies associated with stuttering generally occur in the initial position of words. This study reviews data from a school-age child with an atypical stuttering profile consisting predominantly of word-final disfluencies (WFDs). Our primary goals were to identify patterns in overt features of WFDs and to extend our understanding of this clinical profile by focusing on aspects of stuttering that lie beneath the surface. Method Analyses explored the patterns and distributions of the child's observable stuttering behaviors, in addition to his awareness, perceptions, and subjective experience of stuttering. Results Findings indicated that the WFD profile consists of relatively consistent and distinct overt features. We also found that, in many ways, the child perceived the impact of his disfluencies much like other children who stutter, even though his disfluencies manifested in a less common form. Conclusion Findings suggest the need for increased awareness of the varied forms stuttering may take in order to ensure accurate diagnosis, clear communication to clients and parents, and timely access to appropriate intervention.

Linguistic features of dysfluencies in Parkinson Disease

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine dysfluency characteristics of individuals with Parkinson Disease (PD) relative to linguistic features of grammatical class and position within word. Few studies have reported dysfluency characteristics of PD relative to these characteristics. Those that do report on these characteristics include one case study and a study of six individuals with PD. No previous research is known to have examined dysfluency related to grammatical class and position within words for a large sample of individuals with PD. MethodDysfluencies from 32 individuals with PD were analyzed according to position within a word and grammatical class. ResultsParticipants produced significantly more dysfluencies in the initial position of words compared to medial or final positions, and a significantly higher percent dysfluency for content words versus function words. ConclusionEffects of linguistic features of grammatical class and position within a word on dysfluencies are present within a population with PD and are similar to the linguistic features associated with developmental stuttering. Clinical implications of the effect of linguistic features on speech dysfluencies in PD are discussed.

Errors-based Rehabilitation within Phonological Framework: Segmental Changes in Broca’s Aphasia

The studies of phonological therapy for patients with both phonemic planning and articulatory implementation deficits report the related dichotomy of anterior and posterior syndrome with psycholinguistic model. However, there must be some investigation on segmental errors as input of rehabilitation within phonological framework. This study investigates whether the errors-based rehabilitation model can encourage two Balinese individuals with Broca's aphasia (KW and NS) to reduce the phonological errors. The results showed that KW and NS performed different segmental errors and types of the phonological process even though they suffered from identical non-fluent symptom. KW, in pre-intervention tended to present phonemes substitution, omission and insertion errors which mostly occurred in the initial position of words and he transposed the onset of the second syllable to the onset of the first syllable. Meanwhile, NS in some cases, tended to transpose the phonemes randomly, inserted other segments – especially [nasal] and [lateral] between two vowels (hiatuses) and altered the high complex segments with less complex ones. The phonological error-based rehabilitation was effective to reduce the errors and the phonetic relaxation helped them exhibit minor errors. This indicated that phonetic based training can stimulate the articulatory processing deficit as anterior syndrome.

Error Patterns of Dorsal Rhotics: Evidence from Hebrew-Speaking Children

Objective: The aim of this paper was to describe the error patterns of the dorsal rhotic /ʁ̞/ in the speech of typically developing Hebrew-speaking children and to examine the prosodic effect (i.e., position in the word and stress pattern) of its production. Method and Participants: The participants included 50 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;6–3;3 years. The children performed an articulation task in which they were asked to articulate 18 disyllabic words composed of vowel-adjacent rhotics in initial, medial, and final word positions in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Results: The results revealed that dorsal rhotics were produced correctly in 78.7% of the target words. The main error patterns were rhotic deletion and devoicing. There were fewer correct productions in initial word positions than in both medial and final word positions. No stress effect was found. In addition, 76% of the children produced the consonant correctly in over half of their productions. Conclusions: The result demonstrating a higher rate of errors in initial word positions may be due to the relatively late acquisition of the initial onset position in multisyllabic Hebrew words. Alternatively, this finding may result from the greater degree of allophonic variation found in this position. The finding that languages with dorsal rhotics have unique error patterns compared to other rhotics strengthens the evidence that rhotic error patterns are dependent on the rhotics’ phonetic characteristics.

Khitan Studies I. The Glyphs of the Khitan Small Script

This paper investigates how the Khitan Small Script renders labial stops of the Khitan language in the initial position of words and syllables. Furthermore, it deals with the problems of alloglyphs, drawings of similar shape, and denotations of the same phoneme. The paper begins with the use of glyphs in cases where they transcribe Chinese words. Evidence permitting, this is followed by the use of glyphs in cases of Chinese loanwords and names—subjects in which we have a robust background. Finally, it examines words of Khitan origin with initial labial stops. The result of our investigation is that postaspiration was the distinguishing feature in the binary opposition of labial stops. Alternation of <b> ~ <p> writing is common in cases where a word occurs with high frequency. To demonstrate this, we used the Khitan Corpus published in 2017.

Phonological selection patterns in early words: A preliminary cross-linguistic investigation

AbstractSome researchers have suggested that young children choose to say mainly words containing sounds they can produce and avoid words with sounds they find difficult to produce. This proposed pattern of ‘selection’ supports a hypothesis of dominance of phonological factors in words children choose to say. Based on longitudinal spontaneous data samples during their first 50 word period, word-based tokens produced by two English and two French monolingual children were analyzed. Token frequencies in spontaneously produced word targets (SW-T) were compared to children's actual productions (SW-A) of those target words to understand relationships between targets children choose to say and their patterns in actual productions, (i.e., to evaluate the presence of ‘selection’). Place of articulation (i.e., labial, coronal and dorsal) in initial word position within CV, CVC, and CVCV word forms was compared. Analysis of spontaneous output in daily interactions in children learning two languages with differing phonological systems enables a more general evaluation of issues related to the interface of phonological and lexical aspects during the earliest period of language acquisition.

Influência do contexto silábico da palavra no julgamento perceptivo-auditivo do ceceio produzido por pré-escolares

OBJETIVOS: investigar a ocorrência do ceceio em fricativas produzidas por crianças com alterações oclusais e analisar a influência do contexto silábico da fricativa no julgamento auditivo do ceceio. M ÉTODO: estudo prospectivo, em que as gravações de 428 palavras, produzidas por 15 crianças (idade média de 5 anos e 1 mês) foram julgadas auditivamente por três fonoaudiólogos com experiência no julgamento de alterações de fala. As palavras utilizadas foram constituídas pelas consoantes fricativas não vozeadas, alveolar e pós-alveolar, inseridas em posição tônica, precedida das vogais [i, a, u]. Obteve-se concordância intra-juiz (quase perfeita) e inter-juiz (total, 100%) previamente à análise dos aspectos de interesse. RESULTADOS: embora presente na fala de todas as crianças, identificou-se ceceio em 25,23% do total das palavras. Houve aumento significante do ceceio para: (a) fricativa alveolar em ataque inicial, (b) fricativa alveolar em ataque inicial em relação à coda medial (p=0,001) e (c) fricativa alveolar em relação à fricativa pós- alveolar (p<0,001). Não se observou diminuição do ceceio em relação às vogais co-articuladas. CONCLUSÃO: a ocorrência do ceceio é dependente do contexto silábico, (com maior ocorrência na fricativa alveolar, em posição de ataque inicial), devendo o mesmo ser considerado para fins clínicos e de pesquisa sobre o ceceio.

Influência da tonicidade e local da ruptura na palavra em adolescentes e adultos gagos e fluentes

this study examines the linguistic features that may influence the occurrence of speech boundaries in fluent and stuttering individuals. the study seeks to examine the influences of tone and position in a word on the occurrence of speech boundaries in stuttering and fluent adolescents and adults. one hundred and twenty individuals took part in this study, both male and female, with ages between 12.0 and 49.11 years old, and were divided into 4 groups: research group 1 (RG1), with 30 stuttering adolescents; research group 2 (RG2), with 30 stuttering adults; control group 1 (CG1), with 30 fluent adolescents; and control group 2 (GC2), with 30 fluent adults. Speech samples containing 200 fluent syllables were collected. In the speech samples, the broken syllables were analyzed according to their tone (unstressed, pre-stressed or stressed) and according to the position in the word (initial, middle or final syllable). for tone, there was no statistically significant difference in the number of boundaries between the evaluated tones for any of the tested groups. For the location of the broken syllable, there was a predominance of broken syllables in the initial position of words for the stuttering groups of speakers. For the fluent groups, the ruptures were more frequent in the final syllable. the results of this study reinforce the theory that broken speech is mainly a consequence of slow phonological coding and a corresponding slowness in the building up and recovery of the phonetic plan.

Speech Recognition With the Advanced Combination Encoder and Transient Emphasis Spectral Maxima Strategies in Nucleus 24 Recipients

One of the difficulties faced by cochlear implant (CI) recipients is perception of low-intensity speech cues. A. E. Vandali (2001) has developed the transient emphasis spectral maxima (TESM) strategy to amplify short-duration, low-level sounds. The aim of the present study was to determine whether speech scores would be significantly higher with TESM than with the advanced combination encoder (ACE) strategy fitted using procedures that optimize perception of soft speech and other sounds. Eight adult recipients of the Nucleus 24 CI system participated in this study. No significant differences in scores were seen between ACE and TESM for consonant-vowel nucleus-consonant (CNC) words presented at 55 and 65 dB SPL, for sentences in noise presented at 65 dB SPL at 2 different signal-to-noise ratios, or for closed-set vowels and consonants presented at 60 dB SPL. However, perception of stop consonants within CNC words presented at the lower level (55 dB SPL) was significantly higher with TESM than ACE. In addition, percentage of information transmitted for words at 55 dB SPL was significantly higher with TESM than with ACE for manner and voicing features for consonants in the initial word position. Analysis of closed-set consonants presented at 60 dB SPL revealed percentage of information transmitted for manner was significantly higher with TESM than with ACE. These improvements with TESM were small compared with those reported by Vandali for recipients of the Nucleus 22 CI system. It appears that mapping techniques used to program speech processors and improved processing capabilities of the Nucleus 24 system contributed to soft sounds being understood almost as well with ACE as with TESM. However, half of the participants preferred TESM to ACE for use in everyday life, and all but 1 used TESM in specific listening situations. Clinically, TESM may be useful to ensure the audibility of low-intensity, short-duration acoustic cues that are important for understanding speech, for recipients who are difficult to map, or if insufficient time precludes the use of mapping techniques to increase audibility of soft sound.

Variable word initial and medial consonant relationships in children's speech sound articulation.

The heterogeneous nature of consonants in the medial position of words may have prevented earlier studies from depicting a clear phonetic relationship between them and consonants in the initial and final positions. In this study, auditory perceptual judgments of children's consonant productions in the initial position of words were compared with those on medial consonants varying in number and order. Neither the perceived frequency of correct articulation nor the error pattern differentiated single consonants in the initial and medial positions of words at any age. Performance on consonant blends in the initial position of words differed from that on both types of medial sequences, but it was more similar to medial consonant sequences that corresponded with permissible word initial blends than to those that did not. It was concluded that initial and medial consonants may be regarded as performance equivalents only under certain conditions.

Perceptual Characteristics of Vowel and Prosody Production in Apraxic, Aphasic, and Dysarthric Speakers

Narrow phonetic transcriptions and prosodic judgments were made of single-word imitations by apraxic (AOS), conduction aphasic (CA), and ataxic dysarthric (AD) speakers. AOS and AD subjects showed similar vowel error patterns, particularly predominant errors in low, tense, and back vowels, more distortions than other types of vowel errors, and predominant errors in initial position of words and in monosyllabic words. The CA subjects displayed a different vowel error pattern, notably more substitutions than distortions, more errors in polysyllabic than monosyllabic words, and more errors in noninitial than initial positions of words. Analysis of prosodic features identifiable at the single-word level (e.g., syllabic stress, juncture, and struggles to initiate or complete productions) indicated that syllabic stress errors and more difficulty initiating than completing word production were characteristic of AOS and AD but not CA subjects.

Articulatory and Phonological Aspects of Consonant Substitutions in Apraxia of Speech

The articulatory and distinctive features in 825 consonant substitutions produced by nine subjects with apraxia of speech were analyzed. The articulatory and distinctive features of the target consonants were retained beyond chance levels. The substitution patterns observed were very systematic in that more substitutions were made in the initial word position and stops, alveolars, and voiced consonants were used most often as substitutes for target consonants. The retention and usage of the features in the substitutions were closely related to the phonological markedness of the features, Most of the markedness changes were from marked-to-unmarked. The relationships between distinctive features and their markedness suggest that apraxia of speech is primarily a phonological disorder that is manifested in articulatoriy changes. It appears therefore that speakers with apraxia of speech systematically reduce linguistic complexity and simplify the production of consonants. In addition, the substitutions made in apraxia of speech are similar to those made by children.

Articulation training of two hearing-impaired girls.

Two 4-yr-old hearing-impaired girls were trained to articulate correctly /f/ and /sh/ phonemes in the initial position of words in response to pictures. They were first trained to imitate, and then to respond on demand of "what's this?" As a result, both girls generalized correct articulation to words requiring both phonemes in the initial and final positions.

Slow-Played Speech with and without Time Restoration: A Phonemic Analysis

Intelligibility of speech divided by a frequency factor of two was explored in 12 young adults with normal hearing. Two conditions investigated were (1) 50% frequency division with 50% time expansion (FDTE), i.e., frequency halved and time doubled, and (2) 50% frequency division with 50% time-compression (FDTC), i.e., frequency halved and time restored. The latter condition was obtained by use of the time-compressor developed by Fairbanks el al. in 1953 and modified by Zemlin in 1970. Test stimuli were CVC words recorded by a male speaker and presented monaurally under phones. The response format was of the closed-set type. Test words were constructed so as to emphasize ten consonants in the initial word position, the same ten in final position, and ten vowels always in the medial portion. Results showed: (1) the initial consonants and the vowels were significantly more intelligible in the FDTE condition than in FDTC; (2) intelligibility of final consonants did not differ significantly in these conditions; (3) in the FDTE condition, the initial consonants were as intelligible as the final ones and both were significantly more intelligible than the vowels; (4) in the FDTC condition, the initial consonants did not differ significantly from the vowels and both were significantly less intelligible than the final consonants.

Cross-influences between the phonological systems of Lithuanian-English bilinguals

Two groups of Lithuanian-English bilinguals in Montreal—an Older group fully proficient in Lithuanian and moderately in English, and a Younger group highly proficient in both languages—heard sound sequences of four types: EL, permissible in both languages in the initial position of words, EL̄, permissible only in English, ĒL, permissible only in Lithuanian, andĒL̄, permissible in neither language. They evaluated the extent of acceptability of the sequences as initial clusters of English and of Lithuanian words and rated the subjective pleasantness-unpleasantness of the sequences. The sequences permissible in English (EL + EL̄) were judged as more acceptable in Lithuanian than the sequences not permissible in English (ĒL + ĒL̄). Lithuanian also influenced English judgments in a similar way, but only for the Older group and even for them to a lesser extent. The results from an English monolingual control group indicated that the above findings were attributable to cross-influences between the two languages. Two factors were assumed to account for the influences discovered, the dominant sociolinguistic status of English and the high proficiency of the Older bilinguals in Lithuanian. In the affective ratings, the bilinguals showed relatively more favorable reactions to the ĒL sequences than the monolinguals.

日本語・英語の比較研究に基づく英語教育法に関する研究

The purpose of this report is 1) to make clear the weak points of Japanese in hearing and in pronouncing English, and 2) to show a teaching method of English, poposed by 0. Saheki, to overcome these weak points.Subjects (Table 1): first, second and third year pupils of Junior High School A, of the average intelligence level of pupils in Kyoto City, taught throughout the current academic year by a single member of the staffs of the same school: first year pupils of Junior High School B, also of average in telligence, taught by 0. Saheki for one year; first, second and third year Saheki English School pupils: and freshmen of College D and E.Procedures. 1. Aural Recognition of English Phonemes. The Subjects were asked to listen to and write down 1) familiar English words spoken by a Japanese, 2) by an American, and 3) unfamiliar ones by the Japanese (Table 2, 3, 4),2. Pronunciation of English Phonemes. The subjects were asked to pronounce English words (Table 5). The tests were given at the middle of the current academic year to Junior High School pupils and at the beginning of the year to College Students. After the tests the E College freshmen were taught by O. Saheki and were tested again. The number of the subjects who answered correctly were compared between groups by X2-test (Table 2, 4, 5). Results. 1. Aural Recognition of English Phonemes. Most of the subjects, except those taught by O. Saheki, could not recognize English phonemes (Table 2, 3). It is considered that the subjects heard them in the framework of the Japanese phoneme system. Out of the School A, the younger were the more successful in recognizing them. The longer the subjects had been taught by a traditional teaching method (teaching translation and grammatical analysis of written English without practice in hearing or pronunciation), the more rigid their framework of Japanese phoneme system became. The results of aural tests pronounced by a Japanese and by an American were almost the same (Table 3). As for the subjects of School A, not all who recognized phonemes in familiar words could hear and spell syllables of words which they had not learned, though most of the Saheki School subjects could (Table 4).2. Pronunciation of English Phonemes. The results of the pronunciation were almost the same as those of the aural recognition. Most of the subjects, except those taught by 0. Saheki, pronounced English phonemes in the framework of the Japanes phoneme system. The following teaching process of hearing and pronouncing English phonemes was proporsed by O.Saheki (Fig. 1). At first introduction is given in the difference between the Japanese and English phoneme systems to pupils using some fundamental and varied English phoneme pairs and corresponding Japanese phonemes, e. g. /1/ [1]: /r/ [r] and Japanese /r [i] in initial position of words, /s/ [s]: /s/ (s) and Japanese/s/ [G] etc., not only in hearing but also in pronouncing. The more differentiated the subjects' English phoneme system becomes, the more English phoneme pairs are introduced. And there is a systematic comparison of the differencebetween Japanese and English. The subjects are also trained to comprehend the relation between articulation and spelling of English words' syllables.Most of the subjects, not only the Saheki School pupils but also School B pupils and even College E students, had established a differentiated English phonemes system both in hearing and pronouncing by the end of a course of one year with lessons with O. Saheki.