Acoustic Characteristics of Pronouncing Disordered /r/ according to Duration and Number of Trills: A Comparative study

Abstract

This paper addresses the acoustic characteristics of pronouncing /r/ and number of trills in the healthy and disordered cases. The study focuses on one type of disorder; the distortion due to functional reasons. Three kinds of distortion in adults were investigated: the approximate back distortion, the trill back distortion, and the retroflex alveolar distortion. Ten patients of each kind participated in the study. These were compared against Ten healthy participants who produced correct /r/. The productions were recorded on CSL, and the acoustic characteristics were analyzed through Praat. The comparisons were made between the correct /r/ when appearing in /ra/ syllables in different positions. Other comparisons were made when /r/ was geminated or in isolation. This helped study the differences between correct and distorted /r/.