Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 

About: Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Aphasia & Speech production. It has an ISSN identifier of 0269-9206. Over the lifetime, 1707 publications have been published receiving 35442 citations. The journal is also known as: Clinical linguistics and phonetics & CL & P.

Phonological development: A normative study of British English-speaking children

Abstract: This paper reports a normative study on the phonological development of British English-speaking children. Speech samples of 684 children, aged between 3;0 and 6;11 years, randomly selected from nurseries and schools in eight different areas throughout the UK, were collected and analysed to obtain normative data. This paper reports on two aspects of speech development: the age of acquisition of sounds (phonetic acquisition) and the age that error patterns were suppressed (phonemic acquisition). It discusses the effects of age, gender and socio-economic status on speech sound development. The study found that older children had more accurate production and fewer error patterns in their speech. It found no gender differences in the younger age groups. However, in the oldest age group, it found the phonological accuracy measures of girls' better than boys. It found no significant effects of socio-economic status on any of the phonological accuracy measures.

A guide to analysing tongue motion from ultrasound images

Abstract: This paper is meant to be an introduction to and general reference for ultrasound imaging for new and moderately experienced users of the instrument. The paper consists of eight sections. The first explains how ultrasound works, including beam properties, scan types and machine features. The second section discusses image quality, including the interpretation of anatomical features and artefacts seen in the image. The third section discusses the validity of the data collection procedures, including the effects of stabilizing the transducer and head position, and discusses some methods for stabilization. Section four discusses validation of the ultrasound and stabilization systems. The fifth section presents a sample recording set-up, supplemental information, and normalization strategies for sessions and subjects. In section six are methods of extracting contours from ultrasound images, displaying them, and analysing them. The seventh section considers the tracking of pellets on the tongue surface and the differences between tracking tissue points and continuous surfaces. The last section presents methods, challenges and results of 3D, computerized reconstruction of tongue surfaces. An outline of the paper can be found in Appendix I.

Reliability studies in broad and narrow phonetic transcription

Abstract: A 16-category framework is proposed to review the sources of variance in studies of phonetic transcription reliability. The same framework is used to analyse transcription agreement data collected in the course of a project in child phonology, including 22 reliability estimates from five consensus transcription teams who transcribed eight subject groups. Detailed agreement data at the level of consonants, vowels and diphthongs, feature classes, and diacritics are presented for each of the 16 categories, including such traditional measurement variables as sampling mode (continuous speech; articulation tests), agreement type (intra-judge; inter-judge), and level of transcription (broad; narrow). Tabular and plotted data are deliberately presented at the lowest feasible levels for readers interested in specific questions at these levels. A total of 16 generalizations about transcription reliability are derived from descriptive and inferential statistical findings. The primary conclusion is that for certain c...

Quantifying dysphonia severity using a spectral/cepstral-based acoustic index: Comparisons with auditory-perceptual judgements from the CAPE-V

Abstract: This study investigated the relationship between acoustic spectral/cepstral measures and listener severity ratings in normal and disordered voice samples. CAPE-V sentence samples and the vowel /ɑ/were elicited from eight normal speakers and 24 patients with varying degrees of dysphonia severity. Samples were analysed for measures of the cepstral peak prominence (CPP), the ratio of low-to-high spectral energy, and their respective standard deviations. Perceptual ratings of overall severity were also obtained for all samples. Results showed that all acoustic variables combined in a four-factor model which correlated with perceived severity with R = 0.81 (R2 = 0.65). For the vowel /ɑ/, a five-factor model incorporating all acoustic variables and gender correlated with perceived severity with R = 0.96 (R2 = 0.91). Results indicate that a strong relationship between perceptual and acoustic estimates of dysphonia severity can be achieved in both continuous speech and vowel contexts using a model incorporating s...

Automatic contour tracking in ultrasound images

Abstract: In this paper, a new automatic contour tracking system, EdgeTrak, for the ultrasound image sequences of human tongue is presented. The images are produced by a head and transducer support system (HATS). The noise and unrelated high-contrast edges in ultrasound images make it very difficult to automatically detect the correct tongue surfaces. In our tracking system, a novel active contour model is developed. Unlike the classical active contour models which only use gradient of the image as the image force, the proposed model incorporates the edge gradient and intensity information in local regions around each snake element. Different from other active contour models that use homogeneity of intensity in a region as the constraint and thus are only applied to closed contours, the proposed model applies local region information to open contours and can be used to track partial tongue surfaces in ultrasound images. The contour orientation is also taken into account so that any unnecessary edges in ultrasound images will be discarded. Dynamic programming is used as the optimisation method in our implementation. The proposed active contour model has been applied to human tongue tracking and its robustness and accuracy have been verified by quantitative comparison analysis to the tracking by speech scientists.