A procedure for the computerized analysis of cleft palate speech transcription

The phonetic symbols used by speech-language pathologists to transcribe speech contain underlying hexadecimal values used by computers to correctly display and process transcription data. This study aimed to develop a procedure to utilise these values as the basis for subsequent computerized analysis of cleft palate speech. A computer keyboard file and a modified font file were developed using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet and extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet to improve the computerized storage of phonetic symbols used in cleft palate speech transcription. Computerized coding procedures were written to retrieve hexadecimal values of transcribed symbols and match these to their phonetic attributes as defined in the International Phonetic Alphabet and extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet. Computerized procedures were subsequently developed to analyse transcription data based on these matched hexadecimal values and their associated phonetic attributes, with respect to cleft palate speech. This method will be a useful addition to existing computerized speech analysis tools.