Prosodic features and evaluation of pitch controllable electrolarynx

Abstract

The prosodic features and perceptual evaluation of an electrolarynx (EL) with pitch-control function were examined. We previously constructed a prototype electrolarynx of which F0 (hereafter “pitch”) can be adjusted by up-down or left-right thumb movement, and it was recently developed into a commercial product (Yourtone II, manufactured by DENCOM). Users can choose the pitch-fixed type with jitter (PF-EL) or the pitch-controllable type without jitter (PC-EL). One laryngectomized male speaker, who was an EL user and whose mother tongue was Japanese, served as the subject. He practiced controlling the pitch of PC-EL in Japanese (Tokyo dialect) for two weeks, and then his utterances when using PF-EL and PC-EL were recorded. Twenty normal listeners evaluated his EL speech tokens and were asked to rate on a visual analog scale how close the speech tokens were to normal speech. The results indicated that although the pitch range of PC-EL was narrower than that of normal speech and the production of Tokyo-dialect Japanese was not perfect, most of the PC-EL speech was rated more highly than PF-EL speech. [Work supported by KAKENHI (20500163 and 22500147).]