LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:6 June 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2015
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

Acoustic Characteristics of Stop Consonants during Fast and
Normal Speaking Rate in Typically Developing Malayalam
Speaking Children

Janet George, Final Year MASLP
Anuja Sara Abraham, Final Year MASLP
Arya G. S., Final Year MASLP
Satish Kumaraswami, Assistant Professor & Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

Stops consonants (plosives) are marked by having a complete closure in the oral tract, with the result that the acoustic record will display a measurable period of silence equivalent to this closure. The present study investigated the acoustic characteristics of stop consonants across 2 different rate of speech i.e. normal and fast rate in 7-9 years typically developing Malayalam speaking children. A total of 10 subjects participated in the study. These subjects were native speakers of Malayalam with no history of speech, language, and hearing problems. The subjects were asked to repeat back the words presented in normal and fast speaking rate. The response was recorded using PRAAT software. The acoustic parameters including mean pitch, jitter, shimmer, SNR and HNR were acoustically analysed for normal and fast rate of speech. The results indicated that there is no significant difference for acoustic characteristics of stop consonants during normal and fast rate of speech.

Key words: Stop consonants, Malayalam language

Introduction

Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. Each spoken word is formed out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of consonants and vowels speech sound unit. A vowel is a sound in spoken language, articulated with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. A consonant is a speech sound that is pronounced with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract.

A stop (plosive) is an oral occlusive, a consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue blade ([t], [d]) or body ([k], [g]), lips ([p], [b]), or glottis ([?]). Stops contrast with nasals, where the vocal tract is blocked but airflow continues through the nose, as in /m/ and /n/, and with fricatives, where partial occlusion impedes but does not block airflow in the vocal tract. Plosives are marked by having a complete closure in the oral tract, with the result that the acoustic record will display a measurable period of silence corresponding to this closure. On a spectrogram, silence is shown by the absence of any marking throughout the frequency range; therefore all voiceless plosives will be accompanied by such a blank section on the spectrogram. Care must be taken here, however a blank section on a spectrogram will not always mean a plosive is being marked: affricates also have this feature, and of course it may well correspond to simple pauses in the utterance in question.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Janet George
Final Year Postgraduate Student
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Mangalore-575015
Karnataka
India
janetmanthottam@gmail.com

Anuja Sara Abraham
Final Year Postgraduate Student
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Mangalore-575015
Karnataka
India

Arya G S
Final Year Postgraduate Student
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Mangalore-575015
Karnataka
India

Mr. Satish Kumaraswamy
Assistant Professor
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Mangalore
Karnataka
India
sat8378@yahoo.com

Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.