Difficulties in the articulation of sounds caused by organic oral defects

Abstract

During the production of speech, the air that originates from one’s lungs exits through the oral or nasal cavity in simultaneity with respiration. When this process occurs, the speech organs situated inside the oral cavity come into contact with one another. Thus, constituent elements of speech such as sounds, words, clauses and sentences are generated. Due to abnormalities in the development of a child’s language, the child sometimes finds it difficult to produce speech sounds in a proper manner. This condition is known as articulation disorder which is considered a type of speech disorder. One of the main reasons for articulation disorder is defects in the speech organs in one’s oral cavity. The main objective of this study is to identify the articulation difficulties resulting from defects such as cleft palate, cleft lip and palate, macroglossia, tongue tie and Immovable tongue. For the purpose of this study, sixteen children between the ages of four and ten were randomly chosen from the Teaching Hospital of Jaffna and the Arc Home, Uduvil, Jaffna. These children were given fifty words in a random manner and asked to pronounce them. The research followed descriptive and, when required, analytical methods. The primary data for this research was gathered through observation and interviews. The secondary data for this study was obtained mainly from books, essays and publications that appeared on official websites. This study concludes that the above defects lead to disorders such as sound distortion, sound omission, sound addition and sound substitution. In addition, the study identifies the changes noticed in the speech sounds of words resulting from these defects. This research also aims to create awareness among teachers, parents and society of articulation disorders examined here.