Speech is the process of producing specific sounds that convey meaning to the listener.

There are
some barriers in some instances that the sounds are not conveyed easily to the listener, one of the
causes is within the speaker like having speech difficulty or speech disorder. Eske (2019) refers speech
disorder as to any condition that affects a person's ability to produce sounds that create words. Speech
disorders affect a person's ability to form the sounds that allow them to communicate with other people.
They are not the same as language disorders. Speech disorders prevent people from forming correct
speech sounds, while language disorders affect a person's ability to learn words or understand what
others say to them. However, both speech and language disorders can make it more difficult for a person
to express their thoughts and feelings to others.

Speech is one of the main ways in which people communicate their thoughts, feelings, and ideas
with others. The act of speaking requires the precise coordination of multiple body parts, including the
head, neck, chest, and abdomen. One of the many cases or condition of speech disorder is "speech
delay."

A speech delay, known to professionals as alalia, refers to the phenomenon when a child is not
making normal attempts to verbally communicate. Alalia is manifested by the late appearance of speech
reactions, agrammatism, vocabulary poverty, syllable disorders, phonemic processes and defects in
sound pronunciation. A significant value for identifying the form of alalia has the definition of the zone of
brain damage. So, for example, when the fronto-parietal part is injured, motor alalia can be diagnosed in
the baby, if the temporal region is damaged, sensory alalia can be diagnosed. Various forms of speech
deficiency are characterized by completely different clinics and opportunities for babies in the future.
However, this division of the disease is conditional, as in clinical practice there are combinations of
manifestations of sensory and motor speech alalia.

According to some specialist, there can be a number of factors causing this to happen, and that’s
why it’s critical for a speech language pathologist to be involved. The are many potential reasons why a
child would not be using age-appropriate communication. These can range anywhere from the child
being a “late bloomer," the child just takes a bit longer than average to speak, to the child having brain
damage. Impaired functioning of certain parts of the brain leads to the birth of alalia in babies, which
can manifest mild speech defects, moderate or severe disorders.

The consequences of alalia can remain for a long time, often even all of life. In alalics, all speech
components appear late. Grammatical structure and vocabulary, pronunciation are formed in a peculiar,
slow and disharmonious manner. By the end of the infancy period, babies can have a vocabulary of nine
to 100, but this does not determine the prognosis of the disease. The dictionary is replenished very
slowly and at each stage of development is rather poor. Also, many researchers have noted a distortion
of the syllable structure of the word. The number of such distortions increases as speech develops and
as the crumbs fatigue. There are two types of agrammatism: impressive and expressive. In alalics with
motor form, almost always expressive agrammatism is revealed, and with sensory form - impressive
agrammatism. The grammatical structure of speech is formed late, disharmoniously and has no staging.
 All forms of alalia are characterized by discord between the verbal and nonverbal structures of
mental activity. Oral speech tasks are performed by the child in accordance with the age period without
marked difficulties (meaning and sequence of plot images, graphic analogies, etc.). The slowdown in the
rate of speech formation is expressed by the late onset of certain pre-speech stages. Simply put, the
grunting, babbling, individual words and phrases in such crumbs are formed with a lag, there is also a
marked reduction of stages or a complete absence. In addition to stretching the deadlines for working
out the function, it is characteristic of prolonged preservation of previously mastered stages of speech
formation: egocentric speech, speech substitution by gestures or loud non-verbal cries. Also, there is
often a lack of vocabulary, agrammatism and tongue-tied.

The primary manifestations of alalia, regardless of its form, become apparent in children at the
age of two, when the brain areas are somewhat developed, and the children try to pronounce words. If
you do not start treatment in time, this disease will continue to develop in adolescents. Often, children
with alalia have neurotic reactions that are a response to the presence of a speech defect. In addition,
children suffering from this pathology are characterized by increased fatigue, reduced attention and
decreased performance. They have a secondary delay in the development of the psyche. At different
periods of speech formation in motor alalia, there is a lack of smoothness of speech and stuttering
occurs.

Alalia treacherous disease. Often, children, not understanding what the environment is talking
about, begin to distance themselves from them, distance themselves and become uncommunicative,
which may be the reason for incorrect diagnosis. Often, children are credited with autism or mental or
mental retardation. In addition, sometimes you can not identify the level of hearing. Therefore, in the
first turn, it is on the parents' shoulders that the task of timely detection of the problem falls. And for
this you need to learn the stages of speech development of babies. Also, an essential sign of a defect in
speech development is an excessively slow development of speech skills, slow progress, or its complete
absence for a long time.

Sources:

Eske,J. (2019) What are speech disorders. Retrieved from www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles.

Aleksandrova,pubmed.(2007) Speech disorders in children. Retrieved from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed.

Traugott, N.N. and Kaidanova, S.I. Narushenie slukha pri sensornoi alalii i afazii (Hearing Impairment in
Sensory Alalia and Aphasia), Leningrad: Nauka, 1975.