Malay Language Consonants Contact Pattern Based On Electropalatography Epg3 And Flex Epg System

Electropalatography (EPG) is a medical instrument used in detecting contact pattern between the tongue and hard palate during a continuous speech. EPG contact pattern was built as a guideline for speech study and can be used to guide speech therapist during a treatment. In this study, the EPG3 system is used as an instrument for developing the Malay language consonants contact pattern. Thirty (30) Malay subjects without speech or hearing difficulties were selected in this study. All subjects were required to wear Reading palate and produce 15 Malay consonants in this study. The results indicate in the production of bilabial, velar and glottal cosonants, more contacts were located at the posterior of the hard palate. Meanwhile, in the production of alveolar and postalveolar consonants, the contact pattern were more on the anterior part of the hard palate. Besides, the design and development of new EPG system, namely Flex EPG system was also included in this study. The new EPG system features a Bluetooth technology, which overcomes the major lack of the EPG3 system. The development architecture of the Flex EPG system can be classified into two parts which are the Flex EPG hardware components and the Flex EPG software configuration. Additionally, the Flex EPG hardware consists of the Flex EPG palate and the electronic circuit. For the data collection, the Flex EPG palate was used to detect the tongue and hard palate contact by identifying the electrodes signal. The patterns of the contact are transmitted to a computer for display, storage, and analysis via a Bluetooth module

Contact Pattern of Alveolar Consonants in the Malay Consonants of Paralysis Subject using Electropalatography

Place of articulation plays an important part to produce different sounds. Besides the place of articulation, tongue is also an active articulator during a continuous speech. During the speech, the tongue moves around creating different sounds when it is placed at different place of articulation. The movement of tongue is controlled by muscles. The lack of muscle movement will produce inactive tongue movement. Paralysis is an example of the muscle weakness in a person resulting in difficulties to move. Paralysis may occur due to several factors including stroke and spinal cord injury (SCI). One of the indirect effects of paralysis is slurred speech and difficulty in speaking. This study aims to determine the contact pattern of five paralysed subjects during speech production of alveolar consonants in the Malay Language. The subjects had paralysis due to different aetiologies and with different medical history backgrounds. All participants were required to produce five single consonants; /d/, /t/, /l/, /n/ and /s/. The data recording was done in a studio laboratory with a soundproof system. The device used for detecting the tongue and hard palate contact in this study was electropalatography (EPG). Subjects were required to wear the artificial palate consists of 62 sensors to detect the tongue and hard palate contact. The speech contact was analysed using Articulate Assistant 1.18TM. The results were then compared with the average contact pattern of Malay speaker which had been obtained in the previous study. In conclusion, the subjects who had frequent treatments produced better articulation and the subjects with positive attitudes produced better articulation during the treatment process