The effects of macroglossia on speech: a case study

This article presents a case study of speech production in a 14-year-old Amharic-speaking boy. The boy had developed secondary macroglossia, related to a disturbance of growth hormones, following a history of normal speech development. Perceptual analysis combined with acoustic analysis and static palatography is used to investigate the specific articulatory compensations arising from the macroglossia. The subset of sounds chosen for study were the denti-alveolar and alveolar plosives, fricatives, ejectives, nasal, lateral and trill produced in single words, as well as in short phrases. The phonetic analysis revealed both spatial and temporal atypicalities in the realisations of the sounds in question. Speaking rate was slow relative to his peer's speech and attempts to increase speech rate resulted in dysfluent speech. Given the phonological system of Amharic, however, the atypical segmental realisations, while reducing both the intelligibility and acceptability of the participant's speech production, did not result in loss of phonological contrasts.