Acoustic markers of prosodic boundaries in Spanish spontaneous alaryngeal speech

Abstract

Prosodic information aids segmentation of the continuous speech signal and thereby facilitates auditory speech processing. Durational and pitch variations are prosodic cues especially necessary to convey prosodic boundaries, but alaryngeal speakers have inconsistent control over acoustic parameters such as F0 and duration, being as a result noisy and less intelligible than normal speech. This case study has investigated whether one Spanish alaryngeal speaker proficient in both oesophageal and tracheoesophageal speech modes used the same acoustic cues for prosodic boundaries in both types of voicing. Pre-boundary lengthening, F0-excursions and pausing (number of pauses and position) were measured in spontaneous speech samples, using Praat. The acoustic analysis has revealed that the subject has relied on a different combination of cues in each type of voicing to convey the presence of prosodic boundaries.