The Central Institute of Indian Languages was set up on the 17th July 1969 with a view to assisting and coordinating the development of Indian languages. The Institute was charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research and literary output from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basis research and developmental research in the fields of languages and linguistics in India.

The Institute and its six Regional Language Centres are thus engaged in research and teaching which leads to the publication of a wide ranging variety of books. Publication of books designed for teaching/learning at different levels and suited to specific needs is one of the major areas of interest of the institute. Basic research relating to the acquisition of language and study of language in its manifold psycho-social relations constitutes another broad range of its interest.

This book, Speech of the Hearing impaired, by Dr. M. S. Thirumalai and Mrs. S. G. Gayathri, presents a description and discussion of the characteristics of speech of the hearing impaired, in an Indian language context. Aspects of auditory, visual and tactual perception of speech, and processes of multisensory speech reception in the hearing impaired are presented. The monograph discusses also the early linguistic behaviour in the hearing impaired, along with a detailed presentation of the speech production characteristics of the hearing impaired. The relationship between early vocalization including babbling and prelingual deafness is analyzed, even as the nature of segmental and supra segmental sounds produced by the hearing impaired children is described in some detailed fashion. The characteristics of speech of the hearing impaired as identified by instrumental analysis are also given. This book will be found highly useful by students and scholars of linguistics and related sciences, in particular students and researchers of speech and hearing sciences, who wish to pursue their study of the speech and language characteristics of the hearing impaired in Indian languages context, and use these characteristics for diagnosis and treatment of hearing impairment.