Use of the tracheostoma valve in the marking of contrastive stress and sentence intonation

Abstract

Two proficient tracheoesophageal speakers experienced in use of the tracheostoma valve (TSV) produced a total of 64 examples of “Bev loves Bob.” These productions varied with location of contrastive stress, type of sentence intonation, and use of TSV. Thirty-four listeners judged the utterances in terms of stress placement and intonation contour simultaneously. An analysis of variance of the perceptual results indicated that TSV use reduced speaker ability to signal the two suprasegmental features; however, locus of the suprasegmental features, particularly stress placement, appeared to exert a stronger effect.