A PhD thesis in the Department of English Language, College of Arts, University of Basrah, examined (Nasal Nasality in the speech of Iraqi patients with cleft lip and pharyngeal-palatal insufficiency: a cognitive-phonological and therapeutic study).
The thesis presented by researcher Zainab Yaqoub Yousef Al-Marzouq included five chapters (a brief introduction to nasal nasality first, the objectives that the study seeks to achieve, the questions it addresses, and the hypotheses it seeks to prove, a detailed discussion and theoretical background of speech disorders and resonance disorders, of which nasal snoring is a type, and the study methodology, which begins with a description of the Iraqi phonetic system, which is characterized by being a unique phonetic system consisting of a variety of consonants and vowels, as Iraqi Arabic contains 38 consonants, and each of these sounds can be classified using one of the three criteria: voicing, place of pronunciation, or method of pronunciation, the cognitive study, and the phonetic study of nasal snoring from the therapeutic aspect).
The thesis concluded:
Nasal nasality, which occurs when the tissues of the palate and pharynx do not close properly, leading to nasalization of vowels, is a type of speech disorder that a large number of people around the world suffer from. This topic has received at least little academic attention in the Arab world in general and in Iraq in particular. Therefore, the present study aims to fill this gap and provide a useful resource, both theoretically by providing a clear and solid background on nasal cleft, and practically by analyzing the characteristics of speech associated with clefting and providing successful treatment protocols.
