“Pitch ” Accent in Alaryngeal Speech

Highly proficient alaryngeal speakers are known to convey prosody successfully. The present study investigated whether alaryngeal speakers not selected on grounds of proficiency were able to convey pitch accent (a pitch accent is realized on the word that is in focus, cf. Bolinger, 1958). The participating speakers (10 tracheoesophageal, 9 esophageal, and 10 laryngeal [control] speakers) produced sentences in which accent was cued by the preceding context. For each utterance, a group of listeners identified which word conveyed accent. All speakers were able to convey accent. Acoustic analyses showed that some alaryngeal speakers had little or no control over fundamental frequency. Contrary to expectation, these speakers did not compensate by using nonmelodic cues, whereas speakers using F0 did use nonmelodic cues. Thus, temporal and intensity cues are concomitant with the use of F0; if F0 is affected, these nonmelodic cues will be as well. A pitch perception experiment confirmed that alaryngeal speakers who had no control over F0 and who did not use nonmelodic cues were nevertheless able to produce pitch movements. Speakers with no control over F0 apparently relied on an alternative pitch system to convey accents and other pitch movements. KEY WORDS: prosody, pitch accent, alaryngeal speech Suprasegmental features such as timing, loudness, and pitch are generally referred to as “prosodic. ” A speaker uses prosody to focus a listener’s attention on new or important information (Nooteboom & Terken, 1982); the essential word or phrase is presented as in focus. The perception of focus is triggered by a pitch accent (Bolinger, 1958; Van Donzel, 1999). In Dutch, a pitch accent is realized through a prominence lending pitch movement—a pitch rise, fall, or combination of a rise and fall (’t Hart, Collier, & Cohen, 1990). Accented words are generally louder and longer, but for Dutch, it has been firmly established that pitch movement is the most important cue to accent perceptio