15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


Changes in Intrinsic Pitch After Glossectomy: A Consequence of Surgery or a Mechanism to Enhance the Intelligibility?

Angela Zimmermann (1), Christine Mooshammer (2), Robert Sader (1), Katalin Mady (1), Philip Hoole (3)

(1) Technische Universität München, Germany
(2) Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Germany
(3) Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

In a former study on changes of voice quality and fundamental frequency after glossectomy we found that the mean fundamental frequency and the distance between F0 of closed vs. open vowels changed postoperatively. The general aim of our current study is to investigate whether the changed iF0 distances can be traced back to the consequences of oral surgery or to a compensatory mechanism to enhance intelligibility. Therefore the distances between F1 and F0 for the vowels /i, u, a, o, e/ are calculated for 12 patients. Our results have shown that the distances between F1 and F0 changed post-operatively, but not in relationship to the vowel categories.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Zimmermann, Angela / Mooshammer, Christine / Sader, Robert / Mady, Katalin / Hoole, Philip (2003): "Changes in intrinsic pitch after glossectomy: a consequence of surgery or a mechanism to enhance the intelligibility?", In ICPhS-15, 3253-3256.