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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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The present study investigates temporal variables in speech of three subjects suffering from Parkinson's disease (PD). Over a four-year control period, speech rate was found to increase with time, due to shorter and less frequent pauses and faster articulation rate, achieved by omitting syllables and/or a simplifying syllable structure. The distribution of pauses within paragraphs remains in conformity with the syntactic structure of paragraphs, although variances between individual subjects are observed. For example, one speaker incorporates frequent long non-syntactic pauses, whilst the others maintain a proper hierarchy in pause durations, but with a very short range in duration differences. This may be caused by a difficulty in planning temporal patterns of speech due to rhythm-planning impairment. The overall results demonstrate how deterioration of motor abilities in PD increasingly affects temporal variables in speech.
Bibliographic reference. Duez, Danielle / Viallet, François (2003): "The effects of time on temporal variables in speech read by subjects with Parkinson's disease: preliminary results", In ICPhS-15, 1627-1630.