What Is Speech?

• Speech is a PHYSICAL process: a voluntary, neuromuscular behavior that allows humans to express language.
• A breath of air emerges into the atmosphere as speech sounds that form words, phrases, and sentences.
• Four systems and their main anatomical structures:
  • Respiration (breathing) – trachea, lungs
  • Phonation (voicing) – vocal cords housed in the larynx
  • Articulation (movement of the structures in the oral cavity) – lips, teeth, jaw, tongue, soft palate, hard palate
  • Resonance (sound in a cavity; contributes unique voice quality) – oral cavity and nasal cavity

What Is Speech? (continued)

• In the absence of severe vocal or hearing impairment, speech is typically our primary and first language modality.
• Language does not depend on speech:
  • People express and understand language using various other methods (e.g., writing, sign language, braille, lip-reading, Tadoma).
• Speech does depend on language:
  • Otherwise, it would be a bunch of meaningless noises.
  • Language provides meaning to these sounds.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

• IPA is a symbol system used for documenting the speech sounds of language.
• Each consonant or vowel symbol represents a single speech sound.
• Created for adoption by languages worldwide by the International Phonetic Association.
• Symbols are consistent from language to language.

Phonetics: A “Sound” Science

• Phonetics is the study of the production and perception of speech sounds.
• What is important for you to understand in this course?
  • How to document the speech sounds of American English using the IPA
  • Physiological phonetics
  • Clinical phonetics

Why do we need to understand phonetics?

• Important for assessing and treating individuals with speech disorders and differences.
• SLP1: Child with unrepaired cleft palate; working on /p/ /b/ /f/ /s/ for months with limited progress.
  • Takeaway: essential to know how speech sounds are physically produced.

Why do we need to understand phonetics? (More classroom examples)

• SLP2: 4-year-old boy working on the “s” sound at the end of words. In a rush, the clinician typed words into a picture database: bus, grass, eyes, nose, keys.
  • What’s wrong here? The issue highlights that sound targets in therapy do not always align with how words are spelled.
• SLP3: 8-year-old girl working on the “sh” sound. The SLP used a list of written words (because the child could read): fishing, ocean, mission, lotion.
  • What could be a problem here? The correspondence between sounds and spellings is not one-to-one; clinicians must account for this when selecting therapy materials.

Why is the IPA useful for clinical practice?

• SLP4: Needs to evaluate the speech of an older child who just moved to the US from Egypt; Arabic is L1, English is L2. There is no “p” sound in Arabic. When speaking English, the child says words like “bizza” (pizza) and “Bepsi” (Pepsi).
  • Takeaway: IPA uses the symbols of the speech sounds of a variety of languages; it helps document L2 sounds the child is replacing with L1 sounds.
• SLP5: Needs to evaluate the speech of a child who has very good language skills but is highly unintelligible. Most of her words are unclear.
  • Takeaway: The IPA provides a one-to-one representation of spoken speech. The actual sounds produced can be documented, and omissions or distortions can be shown.

Examples and practice with orthography/transliteration

• Slides illustrate target vs. error after 4 months of speech therapy, comparing orthography (spelling) and transliteration (phonetic representation).
• Example slide prompts reversed examples such as
  • target, error, after 4 months of speech therapy, with lines showing how spelling does not always map to pronunciation.

Why is the IPA useful for clinical practice? (Progress tracking)

• Transcription of speech sounds using IPA is:
  • efficient
  • informative
  • allows SLPs to easily monitor clients’ progress over time.
• Example: Put your shoes in the right place.
  • Regular writing (with lisps): Puch ya shoes, in the righ pwace (lisps).
  • Transcribed in IPA: a precise representation of the actual phonemes produced (illustrative transcription would show the underlying speech sounds rather than the spelling).

IPA – Fun and Challenging!

• Studying IPA can be like “learning a new language.”
• There are variations on how one can transcribe the same productions.
• Different transcribers use their own rules for transcribing.
• In this class, you are responsible for learning Professor Cogburn’s transcription conventions.
• No YouTube, online transcription sites, notes from other courses, using any outside resources, etc.
  • *considered cheating

Typing IPA Symbols: Where can I find them?

• http://ipa.typeit.org/full/
  • Select the IPA symbols, copy & paste.
• In Microsoft Word:
  • Change font to Cambria or Times New Roman
  • Insert → Symbol → scroll for the IPA symbol, select, then insert.
• Mac Users:
  • See posted instructions on how to access the entire keyboard.
• Beware! Pay attention to the IPA symbol you are actually typing!