Perception of contrastive stress in alaryngeal speech

Abstract

This project was a perceptual investigation of contrastive stress in alaryngeal speech. The ability to signal contrastive stress in American English was assessed by obtaining high quality tape recordings of sentence production from four normal and sixteen laryngectomized speakers using four different types of alaryngeal speech. The recordings of these sentences, paired on the basis of differences in the location of contrastive stress, were presented to forty listeners for perceptual evaluation of stress location using a two-interval-forced-choice procedure. As expected, the four normal speakers achieved high (95% or above) levels of stress contrast. Contrastive stress patterns were also realized in a highly effective manner (93% or above) by three esophageal speakers, three tracheoesophageal (Blom-Singer) speakers, and three users of the Western Electric # 5 artificial larynx. Contrastive stress patterns were realized in a lower (86–88%), but reasonably effective manner by two users of the Servox artificial larynx. The findings were interpreted to highlight the contributions that study of clinical samples may make to questions about linguistic theory, speech production and speech perception.