The Impact of Place of Articulation on VOT for Iranian Cleft Palate Children

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of place of articulation on voice onset time (VOT) of Persian initial plosive productions for Iranian cleft palate children. Fifteen cleft palate children and twenty children born without cleft were asked to produce seven words in CVC syllabic pattern. The initial consonant of the syllable was a plosive; the vowel was the close, front vowel /i/ and the final consonant was a liquid /r/ or /l/. The results indicated that in the cleft group, just the same as the normal group, variation in VOT values according to the place of articulation was significant in voiceless plosives but it was not significant in voiced plosives. Moreover, compensatory articulation was considered as a strategy which acts in favor of the general pattern which argued that the further back the closure the longer the VOT values would be.