Rehabilitation of the oral cancer patient should aim to achieve not only morphological restoration but also post-operative functions. However, there are few reports describing quantitative evaluation of the latter. The authors have attempted quantitative evaluation of post-operative articulatory function after glossectomy, and report the evaluation of it by speech intelligibility, electropalatography (EPG), and acoustical analysis. Subjects were five directly sutured patients and five patients reconstructed with forearm flap, all after glossectomy. The target syllable was /ta/ from among speech intelligibility test samples. The speech intelligibility and acoustical analysis were investigated pre-operation, and 1,6 and 12 months post-operation. EPG data were collected by DP-01(RION) at 6 months post-operation. Acoustical analyses were carried out by consonant frequency characteristics and formant variance from consonant to vowel transitions. As a result, subjects reconstructed with a forearm flap showed higher restorative tendency than directly sutured subjects. Articulatory characteristics expected from acoustical analysis were more in agreement with the results of EPG than with the results of the speech intelligibility test. From the results, it was suggested that the acoustical analysis used for this research could reveal changes in articulatory movement and will be useful for quantitatively evaluating post-operative articulatory functions.

Patients who undergo osteotomy experience a radical change in the skeletal relationship between the mandible and maxilla and as yet little is known about how this affects speech articulation. This study investigated the extent to which articulatory placement for the lingual consonant /s/ changed following surgery. Using the technique of electropalatography and acoustic analysis, patients’ productions of fricative sounds were recorded before and after osteotomy. Five patients were investigated, 3 with mandibular prognathism and 2 with maxillary protrusion. Results showed that there were significant changes in articulatory placement after the operation, and that these were correlated with an acoustic measure (CPF). The direction of change could be predicted on the basis of the type of operation undergone, and these changes were maintained 6 months post-operatively. The implications of the findings are discussed.

SThis paper reports on some preliminary aspects of a collaborative cross-linguistic study of normal and disordered Japanese and British English speech. The investigation compares lateralised productians of /d which are abnormal in the two languages. EPG and acoustic recordings were made of four Japanese and four British subjects. The EPG patterns were classified according to certain criteria, such as the presence or absence of complete constriction between the tongue and the hard palate, and the area and location of this contact. Findings revealed that lateralised articulations varied between individual speakers, but that Japanese and English productions were broadly similar. Acoustically, misarticulations in both languages were characterised by a lower frequency of peak energy than would be expected in normalproductions. L'article rend compte de certains aspects prtliminaires d'une collaboration en vue d'une ttude comparte des tlocutions normale et perturbte en anglais de Grande-Bretagne et en japonais. La recherche compare les productions lattralistes de /s/ qui sont anormales dans les deux langues. L'on a prockdt a des enregistrements tlectropalatographques et acoustiques de quatre sujets japonais et quatre britanniques. Les mod2les tlectropalatographiques onr ttt classts selon des crit2res tels que la prtsence ou l'absence de constriction entre la langue et le palais dur, et selon la surface et le lieu de ce contact. Les rksultatr montrent que les articulations latkralistes ont varit selon les individus, mais que les rtalisations japonaises et britanniques ttaient en gros semblables. Du point de vue acoustique, les erreurs d'articulation dans les deux Iangues se caracttrisaient par un abaissement de la frtquence de I'tnergie maximum par rapport 2 ce qu'on aurait attendu dans des rtalisations normales. Dieser Beitrag berichtet von den ersten Ergebnissen einer kollaborativen intersprachlichen Untersuchung von Sprechstorungen im Japanischen und Englischen. Lateralisierte /d-Produktionen, die in beiden Sprachen als abnormal gelten, werden verglichen. Es wurden akustische Aufnahmen und EPG-Aufzeichnungen von vier japanischen und vier britischen Sprechern gemacht. Die EPG-Muster wurden nach Kriterien wie das Vorhandensein oder Fehlen eines vollstiindigen Verschlusses zwischen Zunge und Gaumen sowie Position des Kontakts klassifiert. Es zeigte sich, dab die lateralisierten Artikulationen von Sprecher zu Sprecher variierten, dab aber japankche und britische Produktwnen insgesamt vergleichbar waren. Akustisch hatten die Fehlartikulatwnen in beiden Sprachen einen tieferfrequentigen Energiegipfel, als dies bei normaler Produktion zu envarten ware.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has recently emerged as a useful tool for the investigation of the three-dimensional vocal tract shape in sustainable articulatory targets such as vowels and fricatives. However, existing scanning devices require that subjects phonate in a supine position. Previous work [Whalen, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 88 (1990)] compared MRI to cineradiographic data collected in a sitting posture, and reported limited effects of gravity on velar height differences in vowel production. This study used electromagnetometry [Perkell et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 92, 3078–3096 (1992)] to investigate whether detectable systematic differences in midsagittal tongue posture exist between the two phonation conditions. Subjects fitted with nine transducers (four on the tongue, mandible, upper and lower lips, and two for head correction reference) produced both running speech and sustained vowels mimicking MRI protocol, repeated in sitting and supine postures. Analysis of separately recorded acoustics showed systematic effects of production posture on lower formant bandwidth. Results of comparing tongue height differences between the two conditions will be presented.

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