Acoustic Characteristics of Stop Consonants during Fast and Normal Speaking Rate in Typically Developing Malayalam Speaking Children

Abstract

Stops consonants (plosives) are marked by having a complete closure in the oral tract, with the result that the acoustic record will display a measurable period of silence equivalent to this closure. The present study investigated the acoustic characteristics of stop consonants across 2 different rate of speech i.e. normal and fast rate in 7-9 years typically developing Malayalam speaking children. A total of 10 subjects participated in the study. These subjects were native speakers of Malayalam with no history of speech, language, and hearing problems. The subjects were asked to repeat back the words presented in normal and fast speaking rate. The response was recorded using PRAAT software. The acoustic parameters including mean pitch, jitter, shimmer, SNR and HNR were acoustically analysed for normal and fast rate of speech. The results indicated that there is no significant difference for acoustic characteristics of stop consonants during normal and fast rate of speech.