Abstract
Speech is complex activity involving various muscles of respiration, phonation, articulation and resonation. The end product of these neuromuscular
activity is an acoustical signal i.e. speech. Speech and voice is known to change with age and maximum co-ordination between different subsystems of
speech is achieved by adulthood. The importance of acoustic analysis in studying this developmental changes in neuromuscular activity in speech is
highlighted in following statement by Kent (1976). "The past two decades have been witness to an increasing application of acoustic analysis to the
study of speech development in children . . . . These acoustic features on various aspects of speech production indicates that the accuracy of motor
control improves with age until adult like performance is achieved at about 11- 12 years, somewhat after the age at which speech sound acquisition is usually
judged to be complete."