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This paper examines criteria underlying the development of tasks and materials for the measurement of speech intelligibility in five SouthEasternBantu languages. The chief considerations include utterance length, word familiarity and structure, and phonetic balance. It is established that the foundation research necessary for devising materials in South-Eastern Bantu languages on the same basis as those of Fnelish has not yet been conducted. Salient properties of the relevant African languages include multilingualism, dialectal variation, vocabulary differences between rural and urban speakers of the same language, borrowed words, the simple vowel systems, the fairly elaborate consonant systems prosodic features, certail syllable structure characteristics, and noun morphology. A rationale for the use of two measures of intelligibility is presented, while the need to adapt many criteria characterising English materials is demonstrated. OPSOMMING . Hierdie referaat ondersoek die kriteria wat onderliggend is aan die ontwikkeling van take en materiaal vir die meting van spraakverstaanbaarheid in vyf Suid-Oosterlike Bantoe tale. Die hoofoorwegings sluit lengte van uiting, woordbekendheid en -struktuur. en fonetiese batons in. Dit is bevestigdat die basiese navorsing wat benodig is vir die saamstel van materiaal in Suid-Oostelike Bantoe-tale nog nie op dieselfde basisas Eneels eedoen is nie Opvallende kenmerke van die relevante Afrika-tale is veeltaligheid, dialektiese variasies, verskille in woordeskat tussen landelike en stedelike gebruikers van dieselfde taal, leenwoorde, die eenvoudige vokaalsisteme, die betreklik uitgebreide konsonantsisteme, nrosodiese kenmerke, sekere eienskappe van lettergreepstrukture, en naamwoordmorfologie. 'n Rasionaal vir die gebruik van twee verstaanbaarheidsmetings is aangebied en die noodsaak om kenmerkende kriteria vir Engelse materiaal aan te pas, word ook uitgewys. The present paper explores the range of issues confronted on undertaking research which sought to measure the speech intelligibility levels of a series of surgically-treated oral cancer patients each of whom spoke one of five South-Eastern Bantu languages (viz. Jacobson, 1986). The problem was approached by critically "dissecting" the notion of intelligibility in an effort to extract salient properties and, thereafter, by extrapolating applicable criteria of intelligibility measures to the set of phonetico-linguistic conditions characterising these languages. As such, the major concerns underlying speech intelligibility in the present paper are two-fold. The reconciliation of these two aspects forms the rationale for the choice of designated measures of intelligibility, and is represented in the materials themselves. I Nine members of the South-Eastern Bantu family of African languages are recognised and have developed as educational media and literary languages in South Africa (South Africa, 1985): | 1. Nguni languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele, among a total of twelve Nguni languages. 2. Sotho languages: Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho and Tswana, among a total of eleven Sotho languages. 3. Tsonga. 4. Venda. The present paper happens to deal with the Nguni and Sotho groups of indigenous languages, each of which is sub-divided to form dialect clusters. It was coincidental that the languages spoken by the randomly selected subjects of the study reflect the five most frequently spoken Bantu languages in South Africa, namely, Zulu, Xhosa, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, and Tswana. In view of the number of dialects, some of which are poorly known, certain dialects have been raised to standard forms by taking into account various factors, such as the prominence of a Die Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings, Vol. 33, 1986 leader, or tribe size (Ziervogel, Louw, Ferreira, Baumbach & Lombard, 1967). A second major feature of this group of languages is the profound multilingual situation which characterises speakers of the Bantu languages of South Africa. No materials appear to have been published previously in the relevant African languages for the specific purpose of measuring intelligibility. Speech discrimination word lists used in audiology (e.g. Baragwanath Hospital, 1977) and phonetic inventories (e.g. Hillbrow Hospital, 1981) did not meet those requirements deemed fundamental to the study concerned, namely, clear evidence of the formulation of a set of criteria for item selection, taking into account previous research on intelligibility. Speech intelligibility is the property of speech communication involving meaning, and is the quality or state of being comprehended or understood. A signal is intelligible to a listener, and for a speech signal to have intelligibility, both a speaker and a listener must be involved (Lehiste & Peterson, 1959). Hence, because both speech production and speech perception are involved, distinctly more complexity is implied than is suggested by the use of superficially related terminology, such as articulation, recognisability, identifiability, and discriminability, which do not necessarily pertain to speech communication, consider meaning, or take full account of the listener. Numerous factors determine this "communicative effectiveness". In the main, these are the social context, message content, the stimulus signal and the medium used for signal transmission, the speaker and his speech mechanism, and the characteristics of the listener. Speech intelligibility is employed by numerous disciplines (e.g. speech pathology, audiology, and acoustical engineering), each of which places differential emphasis on these major elements of the communication process. In the research on which this paper is based, the emphasis was on speaker characteristics with an attempt being made to control all other parameters as closely as possible, so that non-speaker parameters could serve

Assessment of speech intelligibility in five South-Eastern Bantu languages: Critical considerations