The Production of Stops in VCV Sequences in Children with a Cleft Palate An Acoustic Study

Objectives: The present investigation was conducted to examine characteristic features of speech production in children with a repaired cleft palate. The cause of cleft lip and cleft palate formation can be genetic in nature. They are morphological accidents which appear at the second embryonic month. Stops may be difficult to produce for speakers with a cleft lip and/or a cleft palate because of problems in obtaining occlusions that are sufficiently tight. It is usually reported in the literature (as in the present study) that the burst of the plosive is not clear, and that plosives may have the aspect of constrictives. Such a disability in controlling the closure of the plosive thus affects the nature of the burst-release and, consequently, Voice Onset Time or VOT. Speakers with a cleft palate will use compensatory articulations [1]. As shown by Powers [2], Lawrence and Phillips [3] or Trost [4], several strategies are deployed by speakers to compensate for their articulation problems. Consonantal durations are usually higher than those of the productions of pilot children. A study undertaken by Ha, Sim, Minje and Kuehn [5] testify these findings