Browsing by Subject "articulation"

Abstract Introduction: Children with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate have smaller consonant inventories, less accurate articulation, and more speech errors than their peers without clefts. Speech and dental arch relationships have widely been the primary outcome measure of palate repair. Aims: The aim was to evaluate the occurrence of misarticulations of the Finnish alveolar consonants /s/, /l/ and /r/ and their possible relationship with maxillary dental arch dimensions in 5-year-old children with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP). Materials and methods: Subgroup analysis was conducted within a multicenter controlled trial of primary surgery (Scandcleft project). 46 Caucasian Finnish-speaking patients (29 boys) with non-syndromic complete UCLP were evaluated retrospectively. Production of the Finnish alveolar consonants /s/, /l/ and /r/ was assessed from standardized audio recordings at the mean age of 5.06 years (range 4.82-5.89). Articulation errors were categorized as either correct, distortion, substitution, or omission. Maxillary dental arch measurements were assessed using the technique of Moorrees from plaster casts taken at the same age. Additionally, the anterior and posterior palatal heights were measured. Aspin-Welch Unequal-Variance T-Test, Equal-Variance T-Test and Mann-Whitney U test were used in the statistical analyses. Kappa statistics were calculated to assess reliability. Results: Only one of the children articulated all the studied sounds correctly. 93.2% misarticulated /r/, 63.0% misarticulated /s/ and 39.1% misarticulated /l/. Distortions and substitutions were common. Omissions were sparse. There was no relationship between the occurrence of alveolar consonant misarticulations and the maxillary dental arch dimensions. Intra- and interrater agreements varied between moderate to excellent. Conclusions: Children with UCLP have a notable amount of alveolar consonant misarticulations. Maxillary dental arch dimensions were not related to the misarticulation of /s/, /l/ or /r/ in 5-year-old children with UCLP.

This thesis critically engages with various approaches to political inclusion. I show that certain difficulties in their perspectives on language as a candidate for conveying representation and recognition of new agents in public space can be observed. I focus on the moral limitations of these approaches, particularly the issue of articulating identities as a form of suppression; confining the political performance of individuals to frames of political identities; the problematic engagement of excluded agents in existing discourses that are embedded in particular power structures; and normative justification of moral permissibility concerning political agendas of new political agents. In the first chapter, I analyze the normative foundations of inclusion in the theories of Luce Irigaray (‘I-you’-identities), Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau (‘we-them’-identities), as well as the cosmopolitan political project (‘we’-identities) in detail. In the second chapter, I critically investigate and analyze strategies of inclusion by means of articulation in these approaches. Finally, the third chapter outlines problematic moral implications of these approaches in order to close a gap within the current scientific debate on this topic and provide foundations of possible future research. Questions addressed there include: Why favor inclusion at all? Which mechanisms of inclusion would be better than the existing ones? Should inclusion aspire to allow for differences and inclusion on terms that are insensitive to differences?

Speech is a sum of a complicated, multifunctional neurological and motor action. By changing the articulatory setting, the resonance properties of the vocal tract change and a new sound is created. Speech can be described as a continuum of articulatory manoeuvre; each manoeuvre has its own function and they're added together to gain the target articulation. Ventriloquism is speech without visible speech manoeuvres. Previously only few studies about ventriloquism have been published. Studies have focused on articulation, expiratory air pressure, fundamental frequency, laryngeal action, perceptual voice quality and simulation of compensating sounds of a ventriloquist. This study wanted to find out about the articulatory strategies of ventriloquists. Nasality, fundamental frequency, duration and the actual ventriloquism as a speech technique were examined – the writer learned the art of ventriloquism during research. Results show higher fundamental frequency, more nasality and longer duration compared to normal speech. However, differences between the participants were found. We can also rename ventriloquism as velar speech technique by the results obtained from the study. The results show, that velar speech technique may have a potential rule in helping those with structurally disturbed articulators. e.g. oral and throat cancer patients during post-operative speech therapy.