...................................................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix LIST OF FIGURES .............

This study applied ERB analysis for measuring acoustic correlates of hypernasal fricatives produced by speakers with different aetiologies (cleft palate, maxillectomy and dysarthria). The speech materials were consonants /n/ and /s/ segmented from two Cantonese single words and four Cantonese oral sentences. Results showed that hypernasal speakers produced /s/ with significantly higher mean amp...

This study applied ERB analysis for measuring acoustic correlates of hypernasal fricatives produced by speakers with different aetiologies (cleft palate, maxillectomy and dysarthria). The speech materials were consonants /n/ and /s/ segmented from two Cantonese single words and four Cantonese oral sentences. Results showed that hypernasal speakers produced /s/ with significantly higher mean amp...

This paper discusses the automatic evaluation of speech of children with cleft lip and palate (CLP). CLP speech shows special characteristics such as hypernasality, backing, and weakening of plosives. In total five criteria were subjectively assessed by an experienced speech expert on the phone level. This subjective evaluation was used as a gold standard to train a classification system. The a...

The velopharynx is a complex structure that is responsible for separation of the oral and nasal cavities during speech production and swallowing. Incompetence of this mechanism can lead to hypernasality, with nasal air emission and incomprehensible speech, as well as nasopharyngeal regurgitation. There can be a significant social stigma associated with velopharyngeal dysfunction, and surgical t...

Rehabilitation of a patient with partial resection of soft palate is a prosthodontic challenge. Surgery is the preferred treatment for speech correction in patients affected by velopharyngeal dysfunction which may not be feasible in many clinical situations. Prosthetic treatment combined with speech therapy is the treatment of choice in such patients who cannot be managed with surgical treatmen...