Speech Databases of Typical Children and Children with SLI

The extent of research on children’s speech in general and on disordered speech specifically is very limited. In this article, we describe the process of creating databases of children’s speech and the possibilities for using such databases, which have been created by the LANNA research group in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Czech Technical University in Prague. These databases have been principally compiled for medical research but also for use in other areas, such as linguistics. Two databases were recorded: one for healthy children’s speech (recorded in kindergarten and in the first level of elementary school) and the other for pathological speech of children with a Specific Language Impairment (recorded at a surgery of speech and language therapists and at the hospital). Both databases were sub-divided according to specific demands of medical research. Their utilization can be exoteric, specifically for linguistic research and pedagogical use as well as for studies of speech-signal processing.