ABSTRACT
This study aims to report the preliminary results of the development of the Turkish Nonword Repetition Test and to contribute to the clinical accuracy of the test by comparing the performance of children with specific language impairment with that of language-level matched and age-matched typically developing children on a nonword repetition (NWR) test developed for Turkish. To determine the effect of word similarity and word length, the Turkish Nonword Repetition Test is composed of language-like and language-unlike items. To determine the effect of scoring, the performances of children were scored as correct/incorrect for a whole word, for only the consonants, and for only the vowels. The findings suggest that the test is a reliable tool to differentiate Turkish-speaking children with SLI from typically developing children.
Subject(s)
Apraxias/diagnosis , Memory, Short-Term , Phonetics , Repetition Priming , Semantics , Speech Perception , Speech Production Measurement , Verbal Learning , Child , Child, Preschool , Comorbidity , Education, Special , Female , Humans , Male , Speech Intelligibility , TurkeyABSTRACT
Studies investigating voicing onset time (VOT) production by speakers with aphasia have shown that nonfluent aphasics show a deficit in the articulatory programming of speech sounds based on the range of VOT values produced by aphasic individuals. If the VOT value lies between the normal range of VOT for the voiced and voiceless categories, then it is a phonetic distortion, thus a phonetic/articulatory deficit. A number of studies in different languages (French, English, Thai, Taiwanese) have investigated VOT in aphasic subjects in which their VOT values have been compared to those of normal speakers. This study investigates the VOT productions of voiced and voiceless stops by Turkish speakers with aphasia. Six patients with different aetiologies but similar language characteristics participated in this study. The results suggest that although Turkish nonfluent aphasics exhibit unimodal distribution of VOT production, the VOT values and ranges show language-specific properties.
Subject(s)
Aphasia, Broca/physiopathology , Language , Phonetics , Voice/physiology , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Speech Acoustics , Speech Articulation Tests , Turkey , Young AdultABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition patterns of sonorant+obstruent coda clusters in Turkish to determine whether Turkish data support the prediction the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) makes as to which consonant (i.e. C1 or C2) is more likely to be preserved in sonorant+obstruent clusters, and the error patterns of sonorant+obstruent coda clusters. Data from 350 typically developing monolingual Turkish speaking children (aged 2.0-5.11 years) were used in this study. Six types of sonorant+obstruent clusters were targeted for analysis of deletion, vowel lengthening, and substitution processes in C1 and C2 singletons of clusters separately. The results showed that the acquisition of Turkish clusters does not adhere to the SSP as indicated by a higher percentage of C1 errors than C2 errors. In Turkish, vowel lengthening occurred when C1 was deleted. To account for these, it is proposed that the syllable structure of Turkish plays a role in the acquisition process of sonorant+obstruent clusters. It is argued that Turkish children acquire moraic structure at an early age, as evidenced by vowel lengthening.
