• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.139-156
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• 2001

Speech intelligibility in patients with complete dentures is an important clinical problem depending on the material used. The objective of this study was to investigate the speech of two edentulous subjects fitted with a complete maxillary prosthesis made of two different palatal materials: chrome-cobalt alloy and acrylic resin. Three patients with complete dentures in the experiment group and ten people in the controls groups participated in the experiment. CSL, Visi-Pitch were used to measure speech characteristics. The test words consisted of a simple vowel /e/, meaningless three syllabic words containing fricative, affricated and stops sounds, and sustained fricative sounds /s/ and /$\int$/. The analysis speech parameters were vowel and lateral formants, VOT, sound durations, sound pressure level and fricative frequency. Data analysis was conducted by a series of paired T-test. The findings like the following: (1) Vowel formant one of patients with complete denture is higher than that of the control group (p<0.05), while lateral formant three of patients with complete denture is lower than that of the control group (p<0.0l). (2) Patients with complete denture produced lower speech intelligibility with low fricative frequency (/$\int$/) than control group (p<0.0). The speech intelligibility of patients with metal prosthesis was higher than that of those with resin prosthesis (p<0.05). (3) Fricative, lateral and stop sound durations of patients with complete denture were longer than those of the control group (p<0.01 and p<0.05), respectively. Total sound durations of patients with metal prosthesis were similar to that of the control group (p<0.05), while those with resin prosthesis had a shorter duration (p<0.01). This implied that those with metal prosthesis had higher speech intelligibility than those with resin prosthesis. (4) Patients with complete denture had higher sound pressure levels /t/ and /c/ than the control group (p<0.01). However, sound pressure levels for /c/ of patients with metal prosthesis or resin prosthesis was similar to the control group (p<0.05). (5) Patients with complete denture had higher fundamental frequency than the control group (p<0.01).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.73-81
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• 2013

Coda in the word-medial position plays an important role in acquisition of our speech. Accuracy of the coda in the word-medial position is important as a diagnostic indicator since it has a close relationship with degrees of disorder. Coda in the word-medial position only appears in condition of connecting two vowels and the sequence causes diverse phonological processes to happen. The coda in the word-medial position differs in production difficulty by the initial sound in the sequence. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the tendency of producing a coda in the word-medial position with consideration of an optional phonological process in spontaneous speech of three and four year old children. Data was collected from 24 children (four groups by age) without speech and language delay. The results of the study are as follows: 1) Sonorant coda in the word-medial position showed a high production frequency in manner of articulation, and alveolar in place of articulation. When the coda in the word-medial position is connected to an initial sound in the same place of articulation, it revealed a high frequency of production. 2) The coda in word-medial position followed by an initial alveolar stop revealed a high error rate. Error patterns showed regressive assimilation predominantly. 3) The order of difficulty that Children had producing codas in the word-medial position was $/k^{\neg}/$, $/p^{\neg}/$, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/ and /l/. Those results suggest that in targeting coda in the word-medial position for evaluation, we should consider optional phonological process as well as the following initial sound. Further studies would be necessary which codas in the word-medial position will be used for therapeutic purpose.