PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION OF VOICELESS PLOSIVES IN ELECTRONIC LARYNX SPEECH

Voiceless consonants are problematic for the electronic larynx user an d the ability, or lack of it, to signal the presence of a voiceless co nsonant in a word may have a crucial effect on the intelligibility of the word to a normal listener. In order to determine the acoustic and perceptual properties of voiceless consonants in electronic larynx spe ech, recordings were made of three proficient electronic larynx users pronouncing the words tea, D, toe, doe, Kate, gate, cot, got, embedded in a frame sentence, 13 times each. Perception tests were carried out , using panels of listeners, and the results demonstrated successful i dentification of voiceless consonant targets at rates well above chanc e for the productions by all three speakers. Acoustic analysis suggest ed slightly different strategies on the part of the different subjects . All introduced an interval of friction noise after the closure relea se, and one subject employed rapid switching on and off of the device in order to create an analogue of voice-onset time. Logistic regressio n analysis of the relationships between the perception scores and cert ain acoustic features suggested that listeners were able to respond su ccessfully to unconventional acoustic cues. The results have implicati ons for the extent of articulatory compensation available to speakers, and for the nature of clinical speech assessment.