Hypernasality in a Shona child with a cleft palate: A phonological account

Abstract

The nasalization of oral sounds in the speech of a Shona child with hypernasality is investigated in this article. Hypernasality is a resonance disorder that is caused by a dysfunction of the velopharyngeal mechanism (Riski, 2009). Individuals with hypernasality produce oral sounds with a nasal resonance because of the existence of a cleft palate. This phenomenon has been considered from a number of perspectives, but this article is a description of a phonemic inventory of oral speech sounds produced as nasal sounds by the child under study. Observations and unstructured interviews were used for data collection. The findings of this investigation show that the child produced simple and complex oral consonants with a nasal resonance. It was established that, although the child had difficulties in producing oral consonants, she could produce nasal sounds found in Shona correctly. It was concluded that the child’s speech is hypernasal since it has more nasal sounds than oral ones. The observations of this research are compiled in the hope that they will contribute to the cleft speech database and more specifically towards a cross-linguistic investigation of resonance disorders of speakers of Bantu languages.

S.Afr.J.Afr.Lang., 31(2) 2011