ARTICULATORY CONSTRAINTS ON A PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM - A CASE-STUDY OF CLEFT-PALATE SPEECH

This paper presents a case study of a 6-year-old girl with a history o f cleft palate and hearing impairment, with grossly impaired speech an d an apparently severely reduced phonological system and yet paradoxic ally a high level of intelligibility. Her speech had been only minimal ly responsive to prolonged therapy. The study aimed to use phonetic an d phonological analysis to establish the articulatory and/or phonologi cal basis of her speech disorder and to explain her intelligibility an d her resistance to therapy. Several methods were used to make an arti culatory and phonological analysis of the patient's speech, including detailed transcription, PACS, nasometry, electropalatography, spectrog raphy and lateral cineradiography. The analysis revealed a sound syste m severely disrupted by the interaction of deficits along a number of articulatory parameters, but where an intact phonological system prese rved contrasts by recourse to subtle articulatory strategies. The resu lts highlight the importance of distinguishing between and acknowledgi ng both speaker-oriented and listener-oriented perspectives in clinica l analysis (Hewlett, 1985). Both perspectives are important in plannin g programmes of remediation. The data are also compatible with Hewlett 's 'two-lexicon' model of speech production (1990) which provides an e xplanation of the sound system's resistance to remediation. Of fundame ntal importance to the analysis of complex speech disorders is the con cept of the articulatory underpinning of phonological contrasts, and t hus of the importance of making a close phonetic analysis of the prima ry data. The premise that all phonetic information may have phonologic al implications prohibits the common temptation to 'clean up' or 'phon emicize' inappropriately, and can aid diagnosis and speech and languag e therapy management.