Phonation is a fundamental feature of human communication. Control of phonation in the context of speech-language disturbances has traditionally been considered a characteristic of lesions to subcortical structures and pathways. Evidence suggests however, that cortical lesions may also implicate phonation. We carried out acoustic and perceptual…

Current accounts of spoken language assume the existence of a lexicon where wordforms are stored and interact during spoken language perception, understanding and production. Despite the theoretical importance of the wordform lexicon, the exact localization and function of the lexicon in the broader context of language use is not well understood.…

Purpose: In this investigation, the authors determined the strength of association between tongue kinematic and speech acoustics changes in response to speaking rate and loudness manipulations. Performance changes in the kinematic and acoustic domains were measured using two aspects of speech production presumably affecting speech clarity:…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate how speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) accomplish voluntary reductions in speech rate. A group of talkers with no history of neurological disease was included for comparison. This study was motivated by the idea that knowledge of how speakers with dysarthria…

Speech production can be broadly separated into two distinct components: Phonation and Articulation. These two aspects require the efficient control of several phono-articulatory effectors. Speech is indeed generated by the vibration of the vocal-folds in the larynx (F0) followed by "filtering" by articulators, to select certain resonant…

The present study aims at analyzing speech samples of four Bengali speaking children with repaired cleft palates with a view to differentiate between the misarticulations arising out of a deficit in linguistic skills and structural or motoric limitations. Spontaneous speech samples were collected and subjected to a number of linguistic analyses…

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the phonetic bases of intervocalic lenition--specifically, voicing and spirantization of intervocalic stops. A traditional understanding of phonological patterns like these is that they involve articulatory effort reduction, in that speakers substitute an easy sound for a hard one. Experiment 1 uses a…

This study investigates the role of perception and sensory motor learning on speech production in L2. Compared to natural language learning, acoustic input in formal adult instruction is deprived of multiple sensory motor cues and lacks the imitation component. Consequently, it is possible that inaccurate pronunciation results from training.…

Background: Web based speech training for dysarthric speakers, such as E-learning based Speech Therapy (EST), puts considerable demands on auditory discrimination abilities. Aims: To discuss the development and the evaluation of an auditory discrimination test (ADT) for the assessment of auditory speech discrimination skills in Dutch adult…

Purpose: To investigate the ability of standard esophageal (SE) and tracheoesophageal (TE) speakers of Cantonese to differentiate between aspirated and unaspirated stops produced at 3 places of articulation were investigated. Method: Six Cantonese stops, /p, t, k, p[superscript h], t[superscript h], k[superscript h]/, followed by the vowel /a/…

Hearing-impaired speakers show changes in vowel production and formant pitch and variability, as well as more cases of overlapping between vowels and more restricted formant space, than hearing speakers; consequently their speech is less intelligible. The purposes of this paper were to determine the differences in vowel formant values between 32…

This paper presents a framework for incorporating the assessment of psycholinguistic constructs into spoken language proficiency testing. Although response time and automaticity of language processing are vital factors in language acquisition, as constructs they are rarely explicitly assessed in language tests. It is proposed that efficiency of…

Signed languages are articulated through simultaneous upper-body movements and are seen; spoken languages are articulated through sequential vocal-tract movements and are heard. But word recognition in both language modalities entails segmentation of a continuous input into discrete lexical units. According to the Possible Word Constraint (PWC),…

This study documents patterns of change in speech production in a multilingual with aphasia following a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). EC, a right-handed Hebrew-English-French trilingual man, had a left fronto-temporo-parietal CVA, after which he reported that his (native) Hebrew accent became stronger in his (second language) English. Recordings…

In spontaneous speech, speakers sometimes replace a word they have just produced or started producing by another word. The present study reports that in these replacement repairs, low-frequency replaced words are more likely to be interrupted prior to completion than high-frequency words, providing support to the hypothesis that the production of…