Ten dysarthric speakers of various etiologies, type, and severity were
compared to age-matched and gender-matched nondysarthric speakers on
40 short sentences. These sentences were presented in both declarative
and interrogative versions. Measures of (1) mean intonation differenc
e (average difference in fundamental frequency between the last syllab
les of interrogative and declarative sentences) and (2) speech rate we
re obtained using the IBM Speech Viewer them. Analyses of variance wer
e performed on the resulting measures with subject group, sentence typ
e, and sentence sets as independent variables. Results indicate that (
1) intonation values are significantly reduced in the dysarthric group
as compared to those for the nondysarthric group; (2) rate varies as
a function of subject group, sentence type, and sentence set. Moreover
, intonation varies with severity of dysarthria, but not speech rate.
These findings concur with the notion that dysarthria is a deficit in
performance rather than in competence. The results are also discussed
in reference to ''breath-group'' theory for intonation (Lieberman, 196
7).