Speech sounds: A pictorial guide to typical and atypical speech

Sharynne McLeod, Sadanand Singh

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Abstract

Speech Sounds: A pictorial guide to typical and atypical speech contains maps of the mouth. Literally, an atlas is a collection of maps in book form; so this book contains a collection of images or maps that have captured different aspects of the production of the consonants and vowels of English. As an atlas highlights topographies and landmarks, this book highlights relevant articulatory and acoustic aspects for the production for each English speech sound.Each chapter profiles a different English consonant or vowel. There are 24 chapters to describe each English consonant and 11 chapters to describe most English vowels and diphthongs. Analytic comments are presented for each chapter. These comments focus on key dimensions of speech production and speech acoustics that differentiate one speech sound from another. Within each chapter there are at least six different representations for the profiled speech sound organised according to static and dynamic representations. The static representations include: ' a photograph of the lower portion of the face,' a schematic drawing of tongue position,' an ultrasound image of the tongue, and ' electropalatographic (EPG) images of tongue/palate contact. ' Dynamic representations profile words containing each speech sound and include a filmstrip, sound spectrogram, and continuous electropalatographic frames of tongue/palate contact. For each of the lingual consonants, multiple images demonstrating inter- and intra-speaker variability are also included. These images have been compiled from a comprehensive research project of eight typical English adults' productions of lingual speech sounds in word-initial and word-final contexts within five vowel environments. An important feature of Speech Sounds is that data from an extensive range of research papers have been assembled to demonstrate similarities and differences between productions of speech sounds by adults and children, speakers of different Englishdialects, speakers of languages other than English and people with impaired speech. Images from research papers have been redrawn using the same template so that extensive comparisons can be made. EPG images from an extensive range of characteristics of people are found within Speech Sounds:' English dialects: Australian, Canadian, English, Scottish, United States' Languages other than English: Catalan, German, Greek, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Putonghua (Modern Standard Chinese)' Impairments: cerebral palsy, cleft palate, Down syndrome, articulation and phonological delay and disorder ('speech impairment'), lateral lisp, hearing impairment, Parkinson's disease.An opening chapter provides explanatory material for the interpretation of each image, and the Atlas then covers numerous comparative images (as many images as possible are included in each chapter), each designed to first be reviewed individually and then comparatively. Reflecting the fact that researchers have focused more on some speech sounds than on others, the diversity of images in each chapter reflects the focus of the world's speech researchers. A final chapter provides exercises to assist students' understanding of the content.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationSan Diego, CA
PublisherPlural Publishing
Number of pages381
ISBN (Print)9781597561068
Publication statusPublished - 2009

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