Glossary of Speech and Hearing

1. Speech: production of phonemes; articulated sounds and syllables.

2. Language: a system of symbols and codes used in communication; a form of social

behaviour shaped and maintained by a verbal community.

3. Communication: a form of social behaviour; exchange of information.

4. Acoustics: the study of sound; a branch of physics.

5. Acute: a short and severe condition.

6. Addition: a form of articulation error; a sound that does not belong to a word is added
(“cupa” for “cup”).

7. Allophones: variation of a phoneme.

8. Ankyloglossia: limited movement of the tongue tip due to abnormally short lingual
frenum (a small fold of mucous membrane extending from the floor of the mouth to the
midline of the underside of the tongue); also known as tongue tie.

9. Anomia: Difficulty in naming things objects and people; found in many aphasic
patients.

10. Aphonia: loss of voice.

11. Apraxia: a disorder of sequenced movement of body parts in the absence of muscular
weakness or paralysis.

12. Articulation: movement; in speech, movement of the speech mechanism to produce

the sounds of speech.

13. Articulation disorder: problems in producing speech sounds.

14. Artificial larynx: a mechanical device that generates sound which is articulated into
speech by persons whose larynx has been surgically removed.

15. Assessment: the process of identifying and describing a clinical problem.

16. Ataxia: disturbed balance and abnormal gait caused by damage to the cerebellum.

17. Athetosis: a neurological disorder characterized by slow, involuntary, writhing and

wormlike movements.

18. Audiogram: a graph that shows the results of various hearing tests.

19. Audible nasal emission: noise of the gushing air as it escapes through the nose.

20. Autism: a profound emotional and behavioural disorder characterized by lack of

response to people and communicative disorders.
21. Babbling: the playful vocal sounds babies of 5 to 7 months produce when they are
well fed, dry and cheerful.

22. Baselines: measures of client’s target behaviours before those behaviours are taught.

23. Bilingual: of tow language; often refers to a person who can speak two languages.

24. Cleft of the palate: failure of premaxilla to fuse with maxillary bone and/ or the failure
of the palatine processes to fuse at the midline.

25. Diadokinetic rate: the speed at which a speaker can repeat selected syllables. (E.g. Pa-
ta-ka.

26. Distortions: imprecise production of speech sounds.

27. Echolalia: parrot like repetition of what is heard; an early sign of autism

28. Etiology: the study of causes of diseases and disorders.

29. Fluency: a characteristic of speech; fluent speech is easy, smooth, flowing, effortless,
and devoid of excessive amounts of dysfluencies.

30. Habitual pitch: each person’s typical vocal pitch; varies within a range that contains
the lowest and the highest note.

31. Hard palate: roof of mouth and floor of nose.

32. Harshness: roughness of voice; undesirable vocal quality mainly due to irregular
vibrations of vocal folds.

33. Hoarse: a voice quality that includes both breathiness and harshness.

34. Idiopathic: of unknown origin.

35. Ipsilateral: on the same side of the body.

36. Contra lateral: on the opposite side of the body.

37. Jargon: fluent but meaningless speech

38. Laryngitis: the inflammation of the membranes of the larynx.

39. Linguistics: the study of language, its structure, and the rules that govern that
structure.

40. Mastication: the act of chewing

41. Mean length of utterance (MLU): the average length of a speaker’s multiple
utterances as measured in terms of morphemes.

42. Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit of a language.

43. Morphology: the study of word structures.

44. Motherese: speech directed to young children by mothers; motherese is simpler, more
variable in pitch, more repetitive, and more fluent than the speech directed to adults.

45. Multilingual: refers to more than two languages, as in a multilingual person who
speaks three or more languages.

46. Omission: an absence of a required sound in a word position.

47. Palsy: paralysis

48. Paraplegia: paralysis of only the legs.

49. Phonate: to produce sound.

50. Phonology: the study of speech sounds, sound patterns and rules used to create words
with those sounds.

51. Phrase: an utterance that is grammatically incomplete.

52. Pitch: a sensation determined by the frequency of sound vibration; the greater the
frequency, the higher the perceived pitch.

53. Pragmatics: the study of the rules that govern the use of language in social situations.

54. Prelingual: refers to a period before the acquisition of language; as in prelingually

deaf.

55. Prognosis: a statement about the future course of a disorder when certain steps are
taken or when nothing is done.

56. Prosody: variation in rate, pitch, loudness, stress, intonation and rhythm of continuous
speech.

57. Prosthesis: a device developed and fitted to compensate for missing or deformed
structures.

58. Receptive language: understanding what is said.

59. Reinforce: an event that follows a response and thereby makes that response more
likely in the future.

60. Response cost: a procedure of decreasing a wrong response by taking a reinforce

away from the child every time such a response is made.

61. Screening: a brief procedure that helps determine whether a person should be assessed
at length or not.

62. Semantics: the study of meaning in language.

63. Sound prolongations: a type of dysfluency; unusually long durations of mostly the
initial sounds of words.

64. Speech-language pathology: the study of human communication and its disorders and
assessment and treatment of those disorders.

65. Stuttering: a disorder of fluency characterized by excessive amounts of dysfluency,

tension, struggle and related behaviours.

66. Subglottic air pressure: air pressure below the vocal cords.

67. Syllable: the combination of a consonant and a vowel.

68. Syntax: the arrangement of words to form meaningful sentences; a part of grammar.

69. Time out: a procedure to decrease the frequency of an error response; every time as
error response is made, a brief period of no reinforcement or silence is imposed.

70. Tongue trust: a pattern of deviant or reverse swallow in which the tongue pushes
against the teeth.

71. Unilateral: one side

72. Bilateral: both the sides.