The importance of the use of narrow phonetic transcription in transcribing a variety of speech disorders is emphasized. This point is illustrated with clinical data from the authors' own research. The examples used are the transcription of a severely disfluent client, a child with progressive hearing loss, repair sequences in dysarthric speakers, a child with idiosyncratic velar articulations, and an adult with progressive speech degeneration. The use of the extended International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for the transcription of disordered speech and the Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS) system for transcribing voice quality is introduced and illustrated in the examples provided. The need for training in narrow transcription is discussed as part of a combination of impressionistic and instrumental description techniques.

In the lead article, Peppé (2009) provides a clear and detailed overview of prosody as it relates to the field of speech-language pathology, an often marginalized and misunderstood subject. Peppé makes a convincing case as to why speech-language pathologists should take notice of atypical prosody in the speech of their clients and provides an overview of current methods of documentation. Peppé also briefly notes that prosody can affect intelligibility and the purpose of this article is to expand upon this point. This article discusses current research on the effect of prosody on intelligibility in the speech of deaf individuals and individuals with neurological disorders. Research findings on acoustic dimensions of prosody and intelligibility are also examined. Finally, this article presents a case study of a child with highly unintelligible speech due to multiple articulatory errors. The child's appropriate use of intonation is examined in several examples as a possible factor that aids intelligibility. Based on the evidence provided in this case study, it is argued that further research is needed in order to determine what degree prosodic cues facilitate the intelligibility of disordered speech.

Despite the importance of speech naturalness to treatment outcomes, little research has been done on what constitutes speech naturalness and how to best maximize naturalness in relationship to other treatment goals like intelligibility. This study investigated the speech naturalness ratings of individuals with dysarthria and the associated perceptual correlates of highly natural and unnatural speech. Four speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease were recorded and rated for naturalness by 69 students in Communication Disorders. Students were presented with 436 speech samples and asked to provide speech naturalness ratings on a 1-9 Likert scale. After rating speech samples, subjects listed perceptual cues associated with samples rated most and least natural and weighted each cue on a visual analog scale. The data on naturalness ratings showed that spontaneous speech was rated the least natural on average, while sentences from a short story were rated slightly more natural and individually read sentences were rated the most natural of all of the utterance types. Thirteen themes emerged from the perceptual cues collected. Of the thirteen themes, intelligibility was rated significantly more important than other cues in highly natural speech and intelligibility and articulation were rated significantly more important than other cues in highly unnatural speech.

This study investigated the acoustic basis of across-utterance, within-speaker variation in speech naturalness for four speakers with dysarthria secondary to Parkinson's disease (PD). Speakers read sentences and produced spontaneous speech. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, phrase-final syllable lengthening, intensity and speech rate were obtained. A group of listeners judged speech naturalness using a nine-point Likert scale. Relationships between judgements of speech naturalness and acoustic measures were determined for individual speakers with PD. Relationships among acoustic measures also were quantified. Despite variability between speakers, measures of mean F0, intensity range, articulation rate, average syllable duration, duration of final syllables, vocalic nucleus length of final unstressed syllables and pitch accent of final syllables emerged as possible acoustic variables contributing to within-speaker variations in speech naturalness. Results suggest that acoustic measures correlate with speech naturalness, but in dysarthric speech they depend on the speaker due to the within-speaker variation in speech impairment.

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