The aim of the study was to analyse the speech of the children with cochlear implants, and compare it with the speech of hearing controls. We focused on three categories of Croatian sounds: vowels (F1 and F2 frequencies), fricatives (noise frequencies of /s/ and /S/ ), and affricates (total duration and the pattern of stop-fricative components in /ts/ and /tS/ ). Eighteen implanted children, aged between 9;5 and 15;2 years participated in the study. All had been profoundly hearing impaired before implantation. Three recordings per child were made over a 20-month period. The hearing controls were matched for age and sex. Implanted children had a smaller and fronted vowel space, their /s/ and /S/ noise frequencies overlapped, affricates were longer, with a high proportion of incorrect productions and substitutions. With time, there was a small but steady overall improvement in all categories. Early intervention (rehabilitation and implantation) are crucial for good speech acquisition.

Patients with cochlear implants have the ability to exercise auditory control over their own speech production and over the speech of others, which is important for the development of speech control. In the present investigation three groups of 10 subjects were compared. The groups comprised: (1) cochlear implant users, (2) profoundly deaf using traditional hearing aids, and (3) hearing controls. The subjects in three groups were matched in age. While repeating after a model the subjects were recorded and the following linguistic voice variables were analysed: (1) vowel formant space, (2) voice vs. voiceless difference, (3) closure duration and VOT, (4) word accent production, (5) sentence stress production, (6) voice quality, (7) pronunciation quality. Acoustic analysis and perceptual assessment by phoneticians showed that in great majority of variables, subjects with cochlear implants performed better than the profoundly deaf subjects with traditional hearing-aids.

The aim of the research was to compare voice and speech in three groups of alaryngeal speakers: 1) patients using esophageal speech, 2) patients with electro-acoustical speech aids and 3) patients with voice prostheses. Acoustic analysis and pronunciation tests were used for the analysis. Acoustic analysis included fundamental frequency, maximum phonation time, jitter, shimmer and intensity. Pronunciation parameters were: phonetic block duration, number of syllables in a phonetic block, rate of speech, maximum number of syllables in a phonetic block and rate of articulation in a maximal phonetic block. Our results demonstrated the advantages of tracheoesophageal puncture with implantation of a voice prosthesis over the other two techniques of alaryngeal speech. Voice and pronunciation with voice prostheses were closer to normal in many parameters: fundamental frequency, maximum phonation time, jitter, shimmer, duration of a phonetic block, number of syllables in a phonetic block, rate of speech and rate of articulation in maximal phonetic block.

This paper provides a more detailed description of normal tongue palate contact patterns for the occlusion phase of velar stops than currently exists. The study used electropalatography (EPG) to record seven normally speaking adults' contact patterns of voiceless velar stops in nine VkV contexts. A variety of EPG indices measured: per cent complete closures across the palate; place of articulation; articulatory distance between /k/ and /t/; and amount of contact. Complete EPG closure occurred in the majority (81%) of tokens. Some speakers almost always had complete closures regardless of context, whereas other speakers produced them only with high front vowels. As expected, place of articulation and amount of contact were heavily influenced by vowel context. The most fronted and most contact occurred in /i/ contexts and the most retracted and least contact in /a/ contexts. There was considerable interspeaker variability on all measures, particularly in the precise location of velar placement and articulatory distance between alveolar and velar placement. The implications for diagnosing and treating abnormal velar articulations are discussed.

Electropalatographic specification of alveolar fricatives in Croatian is aimed at providing speech therapists with normative data about the range of acceptable productions of /s/ and /z/ in adult speakers of Croatian. Four variables were analysed: place of articulation, total contact, groove width and hold phase duration. Intra- and inter-speaker variability for each variable was analysed. Lingual palatal cues for voicing difference were also quantified and discussed. Results show that Croatian /s/ and /z/ are alveolar and not dental as previously reported. The comparison between the voiced and the voiceless fricative shows that durational measures provide the best differentiation. The voiceless counterpart is significantly longer. The difference between voiced and voiceless is also found in the total contact, with /z/ having more contact in the anterior four rows of electrodes, while /s/ has more contact in the posterior four rows of electrodes. This difference is also reflected in the anterior and the posterior groove widths. Possibilities of using these results as normative data for the diagnosis and treatment of atypical articulation of /s/ and /z/ are discussed.