speech production

In most societies, using more than one language or language variety is the norm, yet the reference data against which children’s speech is judged derive largely from monolingual speakers. Systematic cross-linguistic variation is therefore liable to be read as atypical development, placing multilingual children at risk of misdiagnosis of speech sound disorder (SSD). This risk is most acute for closely related, understudied varieties, where difference and disorder overlap and community-specific data are scarce. Acoustic measures (e.g., voice onset time, vowel formants, segment durations) quantify fine-grained, continuous properties of speech production that categorical, transcription-based description obscures. No existing review, however, has mapped which acoustic measures have been applied to multilingual children, across which language varieties, or against which reference baselines their productions are interpreted. The objective of this review is to provide that map, showing where acoustic evidence is concentrated and where it is absent, to support clinical assessment and to identify where community-specific reference data are most needed. The review will follow updated Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology and will be reported per the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews. Searches will be conducted in MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), Web of Science Core Collection, and Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, with grey literature sought through ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global and conference proceedings; no date limits will be applied. Children from birth to 18 years are eligible regardless of clinical status, and a preschool subset (≤ 5;11) will be reported separately. After pilot calibration, two reviewers will independently screen and chart sources, resolving disagreements by discussion or a third reviewer. Charted data will be mapped through an acoustic-measure taxonomy crossed with language variety and reference baseline. This protocol has been registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/R2EX5 ).

Professional speech culture is an essential component of teacher preparation, yet university courses in this area often emphasize normative linguistic knowledge without sufficiently integrating its application to authentic pedagogical communication. This study aimed to preliminarily adapt and evaluate the Teacher's Speech Culture course for pre-service Kazakh language teachers by strengthening the integration of normative-linguistic, communicative-pragmatic, discursive, and interactive components of professional speech competence. A single-group pre-test–post-test design was used. Initially, 180 students were recruited from two higher education institutions in southern Kazakhstan; 156 completed all stages and were included in the final analysis. The adapted course combined theoretical instruction with professionally oriented communicative situations, independent construction of professional utterances, interactive tasks, and reflective analysis of speech behaviour. Professional speech competence was assessed before and after the course using diagnostic and performance-based measures. The assessment demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.86). Data were examined using pre-test -post-test comparisons and path analysis. Overall professional speech competence increased from M = 7.84 (SD = 1.62) to M = 9.72 (SD = 1.48), t (155) = 11.46, p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.92. Significant improvements were also observed across the normative-linguistic, communicative-pragmatic, discursive, and interactive components. Path analysis indicated that the ability to analyse professional communicative situations had the strongest direct association with professional speech competence. Professional speech competence was also positively associated with speech self-control and flexibility of professional speech behaviour. The findings provide preliminary empirical support for a practice-oriented adaptation of the Teacher's Speech Culture course that connects knowledge of language norms with contextual analysis, independent speech production, and regulation of professional communication. Given the absence of a separate control group, the observed changes should be interpreted as pre-test–post-test differences associated with course participation rather than evidence of a causal intervention effect. Further controlled studies involving broader samples are required to evaluate the effectiveness and generalizability of the adapted course.

This study investigates how morphological structure shapes phonetic realization in German word-final /Cst/ clusters, with a focus on form-meaning mapping strategies in elicited speech. Phonologically identical clusters are compared across simplex words and inflected verb forms, where /st/ encodes a grammatical morpheme. We analyse duration, intensity, and spectral center of gravity (COG) for clusters, individual segments, and adjacent vowels, modeling their variation with linear mixed-effects models. Rather than yielding uniform phonetic shifts, morphology-related effects emerge as context-sensitive patterns modulated by lexical and phonetic factors. Temporal effects primarily take the form of durational reduction in of morphemic segments, but they extend to surrounding phonetic material, where they manifest as lengthening. In addition, increased intensity and spectral sharpening are associated with morphemic shortening, calling for a more comprehensive interpretation of phonetic reduction and its relationship with morphological function. Overall, the results are in line with approaches to speech production that move beyond a strictly modular view and posit dynamic interactions between morphological and phonetic information within the cognitive system.

این مطالعه به بررسی چگونگی تأثیر ساختار واژگانی بر تحقق آوایی خوشه‌های /Cst/ در پایان واژه‌های زبان آلمانی می‌پردازد و بر راهبردهای نگاشت صورت-معنا در گفتار القایی تمرکز دارد. خوشه‌های آوایی یکسان در واژه‌های ساده و صورت‌های صرفی افعال مقایسه می‌شوند، جایی که /st/ یک تکواژ دستوری را رمزگذاری می‌کند. مدت زمان، شدت و مرکز ثقل طیفی (COG) برای خوشه‌ها، بخش‌های منفرد و واکه‌های مجاور تحلیل می‌شود و تغییرات آن‌ها با مدل‌های خطی اثرات تصادفی مدل‌سازی می‌گردد. به جای ایجاد تغییرات آوایی یکنواخت، اثرات مرتبط با ساختار واژگانی به صورت الگوهای حساس به زمینه و تحت تأثیر عوامل واژگانی و آوایی ظاهر می‌شوند. اثرات زمانی عمدتاً به صورت کاهش مدت زمان در بخش‌های تکواژی مشاهده می‌شود، اما این اثرات به مواد آوایی اطراف نیز گسترش یافته و به صورت افزایش مدت زمان بروز می‌یابند. علاوه بر این، افزایش شدت و تیزشدگی طیفی با کوتاه‌شدن تکواژی همراه است که نیازمند تفسیر جامع‌تری از کاهش آوایی و ارتباط آن با کارکرد واژگانی است. در مجموع، نتایج با رویکردهایی در تولید گفتار همسو است که فراتر از دیدگاه کاملاً مدولار حرکت کرده و تعاملات پویای اطلاعات واژگانی و آوایی را در نظام شناختی مطرح می‌کنند.

Our study examines the role of oral motor control in the acquisition of acoustic targets for lingually complex consonants in Estonian by speakers from four age groups. We focus on children's production of secondarily palatalised and non-palatalised consonants where anatomical development and acquisition of motor control skills make differing predictions about the timing and nature of speech production. Our aim is to disentangle the contribution of, on the one hand, speech motor control development and, on the other hand, anatomical growth and articulator change in proportion. We examined oral motor control using a single syllable alternating motion rate diadochokinetic (DDK) task and studied the difference between the second formant (F2) and first formant (F1) using functional principal component analysis. Our results show that palatalised and non-palatalised productions differ significantly across all age groups, indicating children can produce palatalisation contrasts from age 3 years, but consistency in production increases with age. Results also show that children and adults with greater oral motor control skills are better able to produce the palatalisation contrast. These results suggest that anatomical proportions pre-dispose children toward early acquisition of the acoustic properties of palatalisation. However, adult-like production of the phonological contrast also depends on the acquisition of oral motor control skills.

پژوهش حاضر نقش کنترل حرکتی دهانی را در کسب اهداف آکوستیکی برای همخوان‌های پیچیده زبانی در زبان استونیایی توسط گویندگان چهار گروه سنی بررسی می‌کند. تمرکز ما بر تولید همخوان‌های دارای پالایش ثانویه و بدون پالایش توسط کودکان است، جایی که رشد آناتومیکی و کسب مهارت‌های کنترل حرکتی پیش‌بینی‌های متفاوتی درباره زمان‌بندی و ماهیت تولید گفتار ارائه می‌دهند. هدف ما تفکیک سهم توسعه کنترل حرکتی گفتار از یک سو و رشد آناتومیکی و تغییر نسبت اندام‌های گویایی از سوی دیگر است. ما کنترل حرکتی دهانی را با استفاده از تکلیف نرخ حرکت متناوب تک‌هجایی (diadochokinetic یا DDK) بررسی کردیم و تفاوت بین فرکانس دوم (F2) و فرکانس اول (F1) را با استفاده از تحلیل مؤلفه‌های اصلی تابعی مطالعه نمودیم. نتایج ما نشان می‌دهد که تولیدهای پالایش‌یافته و غیرپالایش‌یافته در تمام گروه‌های سنی تفاوت معناداری دارند، که نشان می‌دهد کودکان از سن ۳ سالگی قادر به تولید تمایز پالایش هستند، اما ثبات در تولید با افزایش سن بیشتر می‌شود. نتایج همچنین نشان می‌دهد کودکانی که مهارت‌های کنترل حرکتی دهانی بیشتری دارند، بهتر می‌توانند تمایز پالایش را تولید کنند. این نتایج حاکی از آن است که نسبت‌های آناتومیکی کودکان را به سوی کسب زودهنگام ویژگی‌های آکوستیکی پالایش سوق می‌دهد، اما تولید بزرگسال‌مانند تمایز واجی نیز به کسب مهارت‌های کنترل حرکتی دهانی وابسته است.