Perception of Syntactic Stress in Alaryngeal Speech

Abstract

This project was a perceptual investigation of syntactic stress in alaryngeal speech. The ability to signal syntactic stress in American English was assessed by obtaining tape recordings of minimally differentiated noun compound-noun phrase pairs (e.g., GREENhouse vs. green HOUSE) from four normal and 16 laryngectomized speakers using four different types of alaryngeal speech. The recordings of these compounds and phrases were presented to 30 listeners for identification using a two-interval-forced-choice procedure. As expected, the four normal speakers were able to achieve high (96% or above) levels of stress contrast. The compound/phrase stress contrasts were also achieved at a high level of proficiency (93% or above) by all four conventional esophageal speakers, all four tracheoesophageal shunt speakers, all four users of the Western Electric #5 electronic artificial larynx, and two of four users of the Servox electronic artificial larynx. Comparisons were made with the results of similar experiments on intonation, contrastive stress, and lexical stress. The findings highlight the contributions that study of clinical samples may make to questions about speech production and perception.