Consonant production and intelligibility in cri du chat syndrome

This article focuses on consonant productions by a group of children with cri du chat syndrome (CdCS) and examines how various aspects of these productions contribute to these children's overall intelligibility. Eight children and adolescents with CdCS participated in the study, and the following four questions were addressed: (1) What are the characteristic features of the consonant inventories of the subjects in terms of size and types of consonants; (2) how do the subjects render the consonant phonemes of the target language; (3) to what degree do the subjects produce target-like words; and (4) what is the relationship between consonant production and intelligibility? For the majority of our subjects, we found low proportions of correctly produced consonants, small consonant inventories with several recurrent types of deviant consonants, inaccuracy in realization of target phonemes and variable similarity to target words, all of which may contribute to reduced intelligibility.