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Speech disorders become more and more important in clinical area of phoniatrics. It is striking during consultation and treatment of patients that there exist only humble concrete notions concerning speech organs and articulatory movements. Using the computational model introduced here speech organs and speech movements of unrestricted utterances can be displayed in the mediosagittal plane. Articulation is described concisely by using nine basic parameters. The time pattern of these parameter-values defines the articulatory motion plan of an utterance and gives a comprehensive overview of the spatio-temporal structure of the appertaining speech movements. The use of the model in speech therapy shall make patients sensitive for the existence of speech articulators--especially for those which are normally not directly visible (back tongue region, soft palate)--and help to understand and memorize the appertaining movement patterns.

Commonly, only radiographic procedures have been used up to now for the assessment of intraoral movements during swallowing, speech and voluntary motor activities. In this article two methods for assessing intraoral function without involving radiation exposure are described: palatography and electromagnetic articulography. Palatography is particularly useful as a screening procedure for the evaluation of certain lingual motor activities in patients who had undergone tumor surgery. Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) allows vector analyses of lingual and soft palate movements. Data of normal subjects, surgically treated cleft palate and tumor patients are demonstrated. Both methods are biologically safe and non-invasive and do not interfere to any significant degree with the functions to be analysed.