Abstract
A child with cleft palate, who had an operation at 1 year 5 months, showed good shape of soft palate but poor velopharyngeal closure (VPC) function and had cleft palate speech (nasal articulation and glottal stops). She was poor at speech production and articulation in comparison with normal speech comprehension. After the age of four, her VPC function became normal and at that time she could pronounce explosive consonants (/p, t, k/) constantly instead of glottal stops. However, she had difficulties of intentional oral movement and imitative speech production. Her condition was similar to that of a child normally diagnosed as having “Specific Language Impairment (SLI)”. It is suggested that SLI affected her acquisition of VPC function more than 3 years after the surgery.
