Nasalance norms in Greek adults ARETI OKALIDOU 1 , ASIMINA KARATHANASI 2 , & ELENI GRIGORAKI 3 1 Department of Educational and Social Policy, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2 Children’s Hospital “Agia Sofia”, Athens, Greece, 3 Hellenic Society for Disabled Children, Chania, Crete, Greece (Received 5 September 2010; Accepted 17 December 2010) Abstract The purposes of this study were to derive nasalance norms for monolingual Greek speakers, to examine nasalance scores as a function of gender and to draw cross-linguistic comparisons based on normative data. Participants read aloud a corpus of linguistic material, consisting of (1) a nasal text, an oral text and a balanced text; (2) a set of nasal sentences and four sets of oral sentences and (3) repetitions of each of 12 syllable types (8 oral and 4 nasal). The last two sets of material corpus were based on an adaptation of the Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures Test (SNAP test) test (MacKay and Kummer, 1994) in Greek, called the G-SNAP test. Eighty monolingual healthy young adult speakers of Greek, 40 males (mean age ¼ 21 years) and 40 females (mean age ¼ 20.5 years), with normal hearing and speech characteristics and unremarkable history were included in the study. The Nasometer (model 6200-3) was used to derive nasalance scores. Mean normative nasalance for spoken Greek was 25.50%, based on the G-oronasal text (with 8.6% nasals). Nasalance scores did not differ significantly with respect to gender. Finally, spoken Greek consistently yielded lower nasalance scores than other languages examined in past work. The aforementioned normative data on nasalance of young adult speakers of Greek are valid across gender and have direct clinical utility as they provide valuable reference information for the diagnosis and management of Greek adults with resonance disorders caused by velar dysfunction. Keywords: nasalance, Greek, Nasometer Introduction Nasometry, the sampling and measurement of nasal acoustic energy by a microcomputer- based apparatus, the Nasometer, is a valuable instrumental method for the assessment of nasality in speech (Fletcher and Bishop, 1973; Kay Elemetrics Corporation, 1994). The Nasometer provides a nasalance score that corresponds to the ratio of nasal acoustic energy to the sum of oral and nasal acoustic energy expressed as a percentage. The sampling of oral and nasal acoustic energy is made from the mouth and nostrils, respectively, via two microphones, mounted on opposite sides of a sound-separating plate placed at the upper lip. Correspondence: Areti Okalidou, Department of Educational and Social Policy, University of Macedonia, Egnatias Street 156, P.O. Box 1591, Thessaloniki 540 06, Greece. Tel: 30-2310 891-358. E-mail: okalidou@uom.gr Parts of this article were presented at the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 3–9 August 2003 ISSN 0269-9206 print/ISSN 1464-5076 online © 2011 Informa UK Ltd. DOI: 10.3109/02699206.2010.549993 Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, August 2011; 25(8): 671–688 Clin Linguist Phon Downloaded from informahealthcare.com by Dr Martin Ball on 09/17/12 For personal use only.