Articulation and Phonology in Speech Sound Disorders Glossary
Fields and Fundamental Principles of Phonetics
Phonetics: The comprehensive study of speech that emphasizes the description and classification of speech sounds based on their production, transmission, and perceptual features.
Articulatory Phonetics: An area of study focusing on the production features of speech sounds, including their categorization and classification according to the specific motor details involved in their generation.
Acoustic Phonetics: The branch of phonetics dedicated to the study of the transmission properties of speech sound waves.
Auditory Phonetics: The study of speech and sound perception by the listener.
Phone: Refers to physical sound realities. These are the actual end products of articulatory motor processes. They are often used synonymously with "speech sound."
Phoneme: The smallest linguistic unit which, when combined with other such units, is capable of establishing meaning distinctions between words.
Allophones: Variations in the realization of a phoneme that do not change the word's meaning when produced in different contexts.
Phonetic Variation (Allophonic Variation): The actual realization of a phoneme in speech.
Cognate: Refers to similarities between two sounds. This may apply to similar vowels (e.g., and being i-type vowels) or consonants that differ only in their voicing feature (e.g., and ).
Distinctive Feature: A phonetic constituent that serves to distinguish between different phonemes.
Segmental: Referring to discrete, sequentially arranged speech segments consisting of vowels and consonants.
Suprasegmental: Features of speech such as intonation, stress, juncture, tempo, and rhythm that are "added to" the individual speech sound components.
Coarticulation: The concept that articulators are in a state of continuous movement into position for other segments over a stretch of speech.
Assimilation (Harmony Process): An adaptive articulatory change where one speech sound becomes similar or identical to a neighboring sound segment. This is considered a natural consequence of normal speech production. * Contact Assimilation (Contiguous Assimilation): An adaptive process that modifies sounds that are immediately adjacent. * Remote Assimilation (Noncontiguous Assimilation): An adaptive process modifying speech sounds separated by at least site segment. * Progressive Assimilation (Perseverative Assimilation): An influence where a preceding sound affects a following sound segment. * Regressive Assimilation (Anticipatory Assimilation): Adaptation of a sound's phonetic characteristics under the influence of a following consonant (e.g., for "is she"). * Total Assimilation: When all phonetic properties of a sound are changed by another, making the influenced segment and the source identical. * Partial Assimilation: Changes that result in a higher degree of similarity between segments without making them identical.
Articulatory Mechanisms and Anatomical Structures
Articulators: The anatomical structures utilized to generate speech sounds.
Speech Mechanism: The collective structures involved in the production of speech.
Alveolar Ridge: A prominent ridge structure formed by the alveolar process of the maxilla (upper jaw) which houses the teeth.
Oral Cavity: The mouth area extending from the lips to the soft palate.
Nasal Cavities: The nose area consisting of two narrow chambers beginning at the soft palate and ending at the nostrils.
Pharyngeal Cavity: A muscular and membranous tube-like structure extending from the epiglottis to the soft palate.
Glottis: The space between the vocal folds. * Adduct: The action of closing the vocal folds or moving them toward the midline of the glottis.
Subglottal Air Pressure: The air pressure measured below the vocal folds.
Alveolar Pressure: The pressure measured within the lungs.
Pleural Linkage: The mechanism linking the two pleurae (one covering the outer surface of the lungs and one covering the inner thorax/diaphragm) together; this allows the lungs to increase and decrease in volume in sync with the rib cage movements.
Laryngeal Muscles: * Extrinsic Muscles: Muscles with at least one attachment to structures outside the larynx, responsible for larynx support and fixation. * Intrinsic Muscles: Muscles with both attachments located within the larynx.
Dorsum: The main body of the tongue.
Uvula: * Bifid Uvula (Uvula Bifida): A uvula that is medially divided into portions.
Palate: * Clefting: A division of a continuous structure caused by a failure of the palate to fuse during fetal development.
Primary Functions: The life-supporting roles of anatomical structures (e.g., breathing, swallowing).
Secondary Functions: Anatomical physiological tasks, such as the articulation of speech sounds, that occur in addition to life-supporting ones.
Classifications of Speech Sounds
Consonants: Speech sounds produced with significant constriction in the vocal tract, primarily in the oral and pharyngeal cavities.
Vowels: Speech sounds produced with a relatively open vocal tract. * Monophthong: A pure vowel that remains qualitatively the same throughout its production. * Diphthong: A vowel sound demonstrating articulatory movement during production resulting in a change in quality. * Onglide: The initial portion of a diphthong (e.g., in ). * Offglide: The concluding portion of a diphthong (e.g., in ). * Rising Diphthong: A production where the tongue moves from a lower onglide to a higher offglide. * Centering Diphthong: A diphthong where the offglide is the central vowel or . * Rhotic Diphthong: A vowel where the offglide is the central vowel with r-coloring (). * Phonemic Diphthong: A diphthong where the meaning of the word would change if only the onglide were produced (e.g., vs. ). * Nonphonemic Diphthong: A vowel that can be realized as a monophthong (the onglide only) without changing the word meaning (e.g., for "hay").
Manner of Articulation: The type of constriction or narrowing occurring between articulators. * Stop: Complete occlusion in the vocal tract followed by a buildup of expiratory pressure. * Plosive: The sudden release phase of a stop. * Fricative: Consonants characterized by audible friction noise created by forcing air through a constricted passage. * Affricate: A single uniform sound characterized by a slow release of a stopping phase into a homorganic friction element (e.g., ). * Nasal: Consonants produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity. * Approximant: Manner where articulators come close but the constricted passage is wider and broader than for fricatives (e.g., ). * Glide: Manner involving a shift in movement from a narrower to a wider constriction. * Liquid: A category term for laterals () and rhotics (). * Semivowels: Sonorants, particularly glides, characterized by movement from a more constricted to a more open oral cavity. * Flap (Tap): Articulated with a single tap of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge, occurring when plosives are between vowels (e.g., "city").
Place of Articulation: The location of the constriction for consonant production. * Bilabial Fricative: Lips approximate to leave a horizontally long but vertically narrow passage for air. * Palatal Fricative: Fricative with a palatal constriction.
Obstruents: Consonants with complete or narrow constriction (stops, fricatives, affricates) hindering the airstream.
Sonorants: Vowels and specific consonants (nasals, glides, liquids) produced with a relatively open expiratory passage, resulting in increased relative loudness.
Sibilants: Fricative sounds with higher amplitude and pitch (e.g., ).
Rhotic: Specifically relating to r-coloring.
Phonological Theory and Systemic Concepts
Phonology: The study of the sound system of a language, examining sound units, their arrangement, organization, and rule systems.
Generative Phonology: The application of generative (transformational) grammar principles to the study of sound systems.
Natural Phonology: A theory designed to explain the development of a child's phonological system via innate features of naturalness.
Linear Phonologies: Theories assuming that all meaning-distinguishing sound segments are arranged serially.
Nonlinear Phonologies: Theories regarding phoneme segments as being governed by more complex linguistic dimensions rather than just serial arrangement.
Optimality Theory: A nonlinear, constraint-based approach to phonology.
Feature Geometry: A group of nonlinear theories using tiered representations (from autosegmental phonology) to explain why some features are affected by processes like spreading/linking (assimilation) while others are affected by delinking (neutralization/deletion).
Tiers: Separable and independent levels representing gesture sequences or acoustic feature sets.
Binary System: A methodology using plus () and minus () signs to signal the presence or absence of specific features.
Distinctive Features (Chomsky & Halle, ): * Major Class Features: Consonantal, approximant, and sonorant; used to distinguish basic sound classes. * Cavity Features: Refer to the place of articulation for distinguishing phonemes. * Manner of Articulation Features: Signals differences between classes like stops and fricatives. * Source Features: Refer to subglottal air pressure, voicing, and stridency.
Naturalness: Designates sounds that are relatively simple to produce and occur with high frequency across languages.
Markedness: Designates sounds that are relatively difficult to produce and less frequent in languages.
Representations: * Underlying Form (Deep Structure): The theoretical phonological representation in generative phonology. * Surface-Level Representation: The actual phonetic end product of production.
Phonological Rules: Notations demonstrating the relationship between underlying and surface forms; formalized statements about patterns of substitution and deletion.
Phonological Process: A mental operation that substitutes a class of sounds for those presenting a common difficulty to the individual (Stampe, ). These are considered innate and universal. * Suppression: The reduction of phonological processes as a child moves toward adult-like speech. * Limitation: Occurs when differences between a child's and adult's systems become restricted to only specific sounds or classes. * Ordering: When substitutions that appeared random become organized.
Conditioning Factors: * Constraint: Patterns that limit or restrict production possibilities. * Phonotactics: The study of allowed combinations of phonemes in a specific language. * Phonotactic Constraints: Specific patterns noted that limit productional possibilities in a client.
Syllables and Suprasegmentals
Syllable: A unit of spoken language; the process of dividing words into these units is Syllabification.
Syllable Structure: * Peak: The most prominent, acoustically intense part of the syllable, usually a vowel (also called the nucleus). * Onset (Syllable Releasing Sounds): All sound segments of a syllable preceding its peak. * Coda (Syllable Arresting Sounds): All sound segments of a syllable following its peak. * Rime: The linguistic term for the combination of the nucleus and the coda.
Syllable Types: * Open Syllable (Unchecked Syllable): A syllable that does not contain a coda (e.g., "do"). * Closed Syllable (Checked Syllable): A syllable containing a coda (e.g., "stop").
Stress: The order of prominence of syllables actualized by loudness, pitch, and duration. * Primary Stress: The loudest syllable of a word. * Secondary Stress: The second loudest syllable of a word.
Rhythm: The distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables over time.
Intonation: The pitch variations that occur across segments.
Prosody: Variations in stress (loudness), pitch (intonation), and duration (rate) across segments.
Prosodic Features: Characteristics of large linguistic units that influence what an individual says across segments.
Tone-Unit: An organizational part imposed on prosodic data.
Sonority: A sound's loudness relative to other sounds with the same length, stress, and pitch. * Sonority Value Difference: A calculation used in the complexity approach for target selection, found by subtracting the sonority rank of consonants in a cluster from each other.
Timbre: The tonal quality differentiating two sounds of the same pitch, loudness, and duration.
Fundamental Frequency: The average number of glottal openings per second.
Language and Communication
Communication: The act of sharing information, including needs, desires, perceptions, and knowledge, between individuals.
Language: A complex, dynamic system of conventional symbols used for thought and communication.
Speech: The oral, verbal communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words.
Morpheme: The smallest meaningful unit of a language (e.g., "hits" has morphemes: "hit" and "s").
Morphology: The study of word structure and how words are divided into morphemes.
Syntax: The study of organizational rules for word, phrase, and clause order; sentence organization; and relationships between sentence elements.
Semantics: The study of linguistic meaning, including words, phrases, and sentences.
Pragmatics: The study of language use in social contexts, including conversational skills and flexibility.
Morphophonology: The study of different allomorphs of a morpheme and the rules governing their use.
Morphophonemic Function: The role of phonemes in signaling grammatical units (e.g., /s/ signaling plurality).
Metalinguistic Awareness: The ability to think about and reflect on the nature and function of language.
Phonological Awareness: Awareness of the sound structure of a spoken word in contrast to written words.
Phonemic Awareness: An understanding specifically that words are composed of individual sounds.
Metaphonology: Conscious awareness and the ability to reflect on the phonological structure of a language.
Phonological Processing: The use of sounds in processing written and oral language, requiring both working and long-term memory.
Phonological Memory: The coding of phonological information in working memory.
Clinical Conditions and Disorders
Communication Disorder: An impairment in the ability to receive, send, process, and comprehend concepts in verbal, nonverbal, and graphic systems.
Speech Disorder: Oral communication so deviant from the norm that it is noticeable or interferes with communication (also called Speech Impairment).
Language Disorder: Impaired comprehension or use of spoken, written, or other symbol systems.
Articulation Disorder: A subcategory of speech disorder; atypical production defined by substitutions, omissions, additions, or distortions. These are phonetic in nature.
Phonological Disorder: Impaired comprehension or use of the sound system and the rules governing sound combinations (also called Phonological Impairment).
Phonemic-Based Disorder: Synonymous with phonological disorder; refers to impairment of the functional use of the sound system.
Speech Sound Disorder: Difficulties making sounds past a certain age. Per ASHA, these can impact the form (articulation) or function (phonological) of sounds.
Speech Sound Delay: Typically used in young children to denote a mismatch between sound acquisition and norm references.
Persistent Speech Disorder: Errors that persist past the typical age of acquisition, defined as years old.
Deviant Speech Sound Development: Errors not typically observed in young children's development.
Inconsistent Speech Disorder (Inconsistent Phonological Disorder): Variability of production on the same lexical item.
Phonological Disability: A serious difficulty impacting functional participation in society.
Apraxia of Speech: Expressive communication disorder resulting from brain damage affecting sound realization and prosody. * Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS): Neurological pediatric speech disorder where movement precision and consistency are impaired without neuromuscular deficits (e.g., abnormal tone). The core difficulty is spatiotemporal planning and programming. * Developmental Apraxia of Speech (DAS) / Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia (DVD): Older terms for CAS. * Oral (Nonverbal) Apraxia: Disturbance in planning volitional nonspeech movements of oral structures.
Dysarthrias: Neuromuscular speech disorders affecting the execution of speech.
Cerebral Palsy (CP): A nonprogressive motor control disorder caused by brain damage during the pre-, peri-, or early postnatal periods.
Hearing Impairment: Impaired auditory sensitivity Classified as hard of hearing or deaf. * Conductive Hearing Loss: A transmission problem from the external canal to the inner ear. * Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Occurs due to damage to the cochlear hair cells or the auditory nerve.
Central Auditory Processing Disorder: Deficits in processing auditory information not related to the sensitivity of the auditory system.
Oral Muscle Pattern Disorder (Tongue Thrust): Excessive anterior tongue movement during swallowing and more anterior tongue position at rest.
Appraisal, Assessment, and Diagnosis
Appraisal: The collection of data for interpretation and evaluation.
Assessment: The clinical evaluation of a client's disorder.
Screening: A test or activity to identify individuals who require further evaluation.
Hearing Screening: Used to identify children needing comprehensive hearing assessments or medical management.
Comprehensive Evaluation: Activities and tests allowing for a more detailed collection of data than a screening.
Diagnosis: The result of studying and interpreting collected appraisal data.
Independent Analysis: Assessment considering only the client’s productions without comparison to adult norms.
Contextual Testing: Utilizing specific phonetic contexts to facilitate correct production.
Stimulability Testing: Examining the client's ability to produce a misarticulated sound when "stimulated" by the clinician.
Diadochokinetic Rates: Testing the maximum repetitions of syllables like alone and in combinations.
Speech Intelligibility: The aspect of oral output that allows a listener to understand the speaker (Carney, ).
Perceptual Saliency: The conspicuousness or noticeability of an error sound to a listener.
Inventory of Speech Sounds: A list of sounds the client can articulate within normal limits.
Phonetic Inventory: Repertoire of speech sounds used by the client, including characteristic production features.
Phonemic Inventory: The repertoire of phonemes used contrastively by an individual.
Distribution of Speech Sounds: Documenting where articulations occur in a word (pre-, inter-, or postvocalic).
Therapeutic Approaches
Phonetic Motor Approach (Individual Sound Approach): A traditional procedure treating error sounds individually based on articulator placement for norm production.
Multiple-Sound Approach: A therapy technique where several error sounds are treated simultaneously.
Phonetic Placement Method: Instructing a client specifically on how to position the articulators.
Sound Modification Method: Deriving a target sound from a phonetically similar sound the client can already produce.
Minimal Opposition Contrast Therapy: Uses word pairs differing by only one phoneme.
Metaphon Therapy: Training in phonological awareness, specifically sound properties.
Cycles Approach: Uses primary target patterns assessed at the beginning of therapy to determine the starting point.
Probe Words: Words not targeted in therapy but used to check for generalization of sounds not in the child's original inventory.
Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC): Compensation means for those with severe production or comprehension impairments.
Phonetic Transcription and Distortions
Broad Transcription (Phonemic Transcription): Based on the phoneme system of a language; each symbol represents a phoneme.
Narrow Transcription (Phonetic Transcription): Records sound units with maximum production detail, using IPA plus extra symbols.
Diacritics: Marks added to sound symbols to give them specific phonetic value. * Advanced Tongue Position: Diacritic for vowels produced too far forward. * Retracted Tongue Position: Diacritic for vowels produced too far back. * Raised Tongue Position: Diacritic for vowels produced too high. * Lowered Tongue Position: Diacritic for vowels produced too low. * Duration Symbols: Marks the length of speech sounds. * Stress Markers: Indicate different levels of syllable prominence. * Nasality Symbols: Mark the passing or non-passing of air through the nose.
Specific Distortions: * Addental [s]: Distortion where the tongue approaches the upper incisors, creating a "dull" or "flat" sound. * Strident [s]: Distortion resulting in a shrill, whistle-like sound. * Nasal "s": Irregular production with nasal airflow due to incomplete nasal-pharyngeal closure. * Dentalization: Producing nondental consonants at a dental place of articulation. * Labialization: Rounding lips for sounds normally produced without rounding (e.g., for "soup"). * Nonlabialization: Failing to round lips for sounds that require it. * Lateralization: Consonant production (other than ) where air is released laterally. * Aspiration of Plosives: Strong burst of breath on release. * Nonaspiration of Plosives: Lack of breath burst on sounds normally aspirated. * Epenthesis: The insertion of a sound segment (often a schwa) into a word (e.g., for "please"). * Metathesis: The transposition of sounds within an utterance. * Derhotacization: Loss of r-coloring in rhotics or central vowels. * Backing: Substitution where the place of articulation is more posterior than intended.
Developmental Stages and Cultural Factors
Phonological Development: The gradual acquisition of speech sound form and function.
Prelinguistic Behavior: Vocalizations occurring before the first actual words.
Canonical Babbling: Includes both reduplicated and nonreduplicated babbling stages. * Reduplicated Babbling: Strings of similar consonant-vowel productions. * Non-reduplicated (Variegated) Babbling: Variation of both consonants and vowels from syllable to syllable.
Jargon: Babbled strings modulated by intonation and rhythm resembling actual speech.
First Word: A stable phonetic form produced consistently in context, recognizably related to the adult form.
Proto-word (Vocable / Phonetically Consistent Form / Quasi-word): Consistent vocalization without a recognizable adult model.
Phonetic Variability: The instability of pronunciations characteristic of a child's first words.
Item Learning: Acquiring words as unanalyzed units or productional wholes.
System Learning: Acquisition of phonemic principles for a specific phonological system.
Phonological Idiom (Regression): Accurate productions that are later replaced by inaccurate ones.
Categorical Perception: The ability to perceive speech sounds along a continuum according to native language categories.
Perceptual Constancy: The ability to identify the same sound across different speakers and pitches.
Limited English Proficient (LEP): Individuals aged to whose native language is not English, impacting social/academic participation (PL107-110, No Child Left Behind Act, ).
Interference: The impact of a first language () on the second language ().
Silent Period: A timeframe where English language learners may speak very little while focusing on comprehension.
Code Mixing / Code Switching: Alternating between languages () or dialects (e.g., AAVE and General American English).
Dialect: A neutral label for any variety of a language shared by a group. * Regional Dialect: Based on geographical location. * Social Dialect: Related to socioeconomic status. * Ethnic Dialect: Related to ethnic background.
Race: A biological label based on observable physical features and genetic composition.
Ethnicity: Commonalities like religion, nationality, and region.
Culture: A way of life including values, beliefs, and traditions that can impact dialect.