Changes to certain extIPA diacritics.

This short note outlines changes to three of the diacritics on the extIPA chart and provides an updated version of the entire chart.

Anger and aspirations: Linguistic analysis of identity after traumatic brain injury.

It has been well established that positive identity construction or reconstruction is important for positive rehabilitation outcomes after Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Such identities are constructed and communicated through interactional exchanges. In this study, the tools of systemic functional linguistics are used to investigate how language was used to create and establish identities for three participants with a severe TBI.

The latest development of the DELAD project for sharing corpora of speech disorders.

Corpora of speech of individuals with communication disorders (CSD) are invaluable resources for education and research, but they are costly and hard to build and difficult to share for various reasons. DELAD, which means 'shared' in Swedish, is a project initiated by Professors Nicole Müller and Martin Ball in 2015 that aims to address this issue by establishing a platform for researchers to share datasets of speech disorders with interested audiences. To date four workshops have been held, where selected participants, covering various expertise including researchers in clinical phonetics and linguistics, speech and language therapy, infrastructure specialists, and ethics and legal specialists, participated to discuss relevant issues in setting up such an archive.

Transcribing rhotics in normal and disordered speech.

The IPA's comparative lack of dedicated symbols for sonorant consonants as compared to obstruents presents some difficulties for clinical phoneticians. Among these are the ways of transcribing apical versus bunched approximant-/r/, the bilabial approximant realisation of target approximant-/r/, and fricative rhotic realisations of approximant-/r/ in normal and disordered speech. This note reports some developments in transcription that would allow clinical phoneticians to avoid the use of difficult-to-read diacritics when transcribing these sounds.

Evidence for the distinction between "consonantal-/r/" and "vocalic-/r/" in American English.

We examine the distinction between "consonantal-r" and "vocalic-r" in American English, terms encountered in the speech pathology literature but rarely in phonetic studies. We review evidence from phonetics, phonology and therapy, and describe our own study which measured percentage rhoticity in pre- and post-vocalic /r/. We suggest that the evidence supports a view that there is no more variation between pre-vocalic and post-vocalic /r/ than found in many other consonants.

The rhaeadr effect in clinical phonology.

A distinction is drawn between Crystal's bucket theory of language processing and an overflow of effects between different linguistic levels in language production. Most of the examples are drawn from Welsh (a language of mutual interest to the author and the honoree of this issue). For that reason, it is proposed that this effect is termed the rhaeadr effect (from the Welsh for waterfall).

An analysis of the sonority hypothesis and cluster realization in a child with phonological disorder.

This study describes the realization of onset and coda clusters in a 4-year old child acquiring American English, and with a higher than usual level of unintelligible speech. It reviews previous studies that have tested cluster realization against markedness and, in particular, the sonority hypothesis. This latter predicts steep rises in sonority at onsets and more gradual falls in sonority at codas of syllables.

Transcribing disordered speech: by target or by production?

The ability to transcribe disordered speech is a vital tool for speech-language pathologists, as accurate description of a client's speech output is needed for both diagnosis and effective intervention. Clients in the speech clinic often use sounds that are not part of the target sound system and which may, in some cases, be sounds not found in natural language at all. While the IPA provides a wide range of symbols that can be used in clinical transcription, the extended IPA (extIPA) may also be needed to transcribe atypical sounds never or rarely encountered in natural language.

Non-pulmonic-egressive speech in clinical data: a brief review.

This review examines the literature on the use of non-pulmonic egressive sounds in disordered speech. Studies are described that report the use of pulmonic ingressive speech, clicks, ejectives, and implosives. Broad trends are identified linking the use of each type of non-pulmonic-egressive airstream use with particular disorders.

Typically developing and speech-impaired children's adherence to the sonority hypothesis.

During phonological development, children frequently produce consonant clusters as consonant singletons, a process commonly referred to as cluster reduction. The principles of sonority may provide a theoretical basis for explaining patterns of cluster reduction evident in children's speech. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether children's word-initial cluster reductions adhered to the sonority hypothesis.

Distributional and stylistic variation in /r/-misarticulations: a case study.

This article describes the case of a client who displayed some interesting patterns of realization of the target English phoneme /r/. These varied according to both distribution within the word, and style of utterance. We speculate as to the cause of some of these forms, and on possible therapy strategies.

Phonetic and phonological analysis of progressive speech degeneration: a case study.

In this paper we report on an adult male participant with a rare form of progressive speech degeneration. We present acoustic phonetic data on his vowel and consonant production, and describe his prosody and syllable structure. We suggest possible phonological analyses of his speech, concluding that a gestural approach to phonology best characterizes his speech production and its degeneration.

Owning up to complexity: a sociocultural orientation to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

To enrich our conception of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it is necessary to take a wider orientation to this disability category than has been advocated traditionally. Over the past decade, there has been an emerging conception of ADHD from a sociocultural perspective, and this orientation, when linked to the traditional biomedical perspective, provides a more accurate and authentic construct of ADHD. In this article, we advocate that speech-language pathologists approach ADHD with a mindset that is open to the complexities of context-bound human functioning at all levels.

Clinical applications of a cognitive phonology.

It is noted that much previous work in phonology has attempted to provide economical theories of sound systems without explicitly attempting to provide theories that have psycholinguistic validity. The work of Bybee on a cognitive approach to phonology is described, and its possible application to disordered speech is considered. It is discussed that cognitive phonology, coupled with gestural phonology, provides descriptive as well as explanatory accounts of disordered speech, and has specific implications for approaches to therapy.

Electronic publishing: opportunities and challenges for clinical linguistics and phonetics.

This paper discusses the contributions of informatics technology to the field of clinical linguistics and phonetics. The electronic publication of research reports and books has facilitated both the dissemination and the retrieval of scientific information. Electronic archives of speech and language corpora, too, stimulate research efforts.

Models of phonology in the education of speech-language pathologists.

We discuss developments in theoretical phonology and, in particular, at the divide between theories aiming to be adequate accounts of the data, as opposed to those claiming psycholinguistic validity. It would seem that the latter might have greater utility for thye speech-language pathologist. However, we need to know the dominant models of clinical phonology, in both clinical education and practise, before we can promote other theoretical approaches.

Transcribing disordered speech: the segmental and prosodic layers.

In this article we explore the speech layers of a transcription toolkit. We begin by discussing issues of transcription theory and practice, including the difference between broad and narrow phonetic transcription and the importance of narrow transcription with disordered speech, and the measurement of transcriber reliability. We also look at extending symbol sets and using instrumental approaches to deal with atypical speech production.