Some Temporal Characteristics of Speech of Children with Unoperated Cleft Lip and Palate

Abstract

Analysis of speech of individuals with cleft palate provides an insight to understand the physiology of CLP speech. The present study was aimed to investigate some temporal characteristics of speech in individuals with unilateral unoperated cleft palate and to compare with typically developing children (non-cleft. A total of 20 children were divided into two different groups ten in each group. Speech stimuli consisted of sixteen bisyllabic meaningful Kannada words loaded with target phonemes combined with consonants in CVCV combination (e.g. /pata/, /bada/ etc) in initial and medial positions. Participants were asked to repeat the words thrice clearly Vowel duration, closure duration and total duration were analyzed using PRAAT software version 5.1.27. The results revealed that vowel duration, closure duration and total duration in children with unoperated cleft palate was found to be longer when compared to that of the control group. The results also indicated significant difference across the group in all the three parameters studied.