Vowel Production in Aphasia: Preliminary Acoustic Findings from Arabic

Adam  Hisham

doi:10.29038/eejpl.2021.8.2.his

Authors

Adam Hisham The American University of the Middle East, Kuwait

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29038/eejpl.2021.8.2.his

Keywords:

Palestinian Arabic-speaking Broca’s aphasics, formants of Arabic vowels, vowel duration, acoustic analysis, Broca's aphasia

Abstract

The present study examined the temporal and spectral characteristics of vowels produced by Palestinian Arabic- speaking individuals with Broca’s aphasia compared to healthy speakers. Specifically, vowel duration and formant frequency measures (F1&F2) were made. eight speakers with Broca’s aphasia and eight healthy speakers participated in the study. Repetition was used to elicit the target vowels to minimize language comprehension or reading difficulties by the individuals with Broca’s aphasia. The speech sample contains the long vowels (/a:,u:,i:/) embedded in CVC words with nasal initials. Statistical analysis was used to determine any significant differences concerning the formant values (F1/F2) between the speaker groups. Findings showed that speakers with Broca’s aphasia produced vowel categories with more variability than healthy speakers. For some, formant frequencies were comparable with those of the healthy speakers, and yet others showed an overlap of phonetic categories. Specifically, F1 and F2 for the vowel /u:/ were higher for individuals with Broca’s aphasia compared to normal-speaking individuals, but they were not statistically significant. Furthermore, although speakers with Broca’s aphasia produced longer vowel durations than the healthy speakers, they were not significantly different between speaker groups except for the vowel /i:/. Reduced vowel space was also observed in speakers with Broca’s aphasia. The vowel ellipses as shown by speakers with Broca’s aphasia were larger than those of healthy speakers. Results support previous studies showing abnormal temporal durations and spectral patterns in Broca’s aphasia. Findings can contribute to cross-linguistic research on vowel production in aphasia, mainly in understudied languages such as Arabic.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Adam Hisham, The American University of the Middle East, Kuwait

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0798-6426

hishamadam3@hotmail.com

References

Al-Ani, S. (1970). Arabic phonology; an acoustical and physiological investigation. The Hague: Mouton.

Abou Haidar, L. (1994). Norme linguistique et variabilité dialectale: analyse formantique du système vocalique de la langue arabe. Revue de honétique Appliquée, 110, 1-15.

Alotaibi, Y. & Hussain, A. (2009). Formant based analysis of spoken Arabic vowels. Lecture Notes Computer Science, 5707, 162-169.

Aziz, M. A. , Hassan, M. , Razak, R. , & Garraffa, M. (2020). Syntactic abilities in Malay adult speakers with aphasia: A study on passive sentences and argument structures. Aphasiology, 34(7), 886–904. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2020.1742283

Baum, S., & Boyczuk, J. (1999). Speech timing subsequent to brain damage: Effects of utterance length and complexity. Brain and Language, 67(1), 30-45. https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.1999.2047

Baum, S., & Pell, M. (1997). Production of affective and linguistic prosody by brain-damaged patients. Aphasiology, 11(2), 177-198. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687039708248463

Belkaid, Y. (1984). Les voyelles de l’arabe littéraire moderne. Analyse spectrographique. Travaux de l’Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg, 16, 217-240.

Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2020). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version 1.43) [computer program]. Retrieved from /http://www.praat.org.

Boye, K., & Bastiaanse, R. (2018). Grammatical versus lexical words in theory and aphasia: Integrating linguistics and neurolinguistics. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3, 1–18.

Caramazza, A. (1997). How many levels of processing are there in lexical access? Cognitive Neuropsychology, 14(1), 177-208. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1080/026432997381664

Chodroff, E., & Wilson, C. (2020). Acoustic–phonetic and auditory mechanisms of adaptation in the perception of sibilant fricatives. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82(4), 2027–2048. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01894-2

Ferguson, S., & Kewley-Port, D. (2007). Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: Acoustic characteristics of vowels. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50(5), 1241-1255. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2007/087)

Fyndanis, V., Arcara, G., Christidou, P., & Caplan, D. (2018). Morphosyntactic production and verbal working memory: Evidence from Greek aphasia and healthy aging. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(5), 1171–1187. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_jslhr-l-17-0103

Gandour, J., & Dardarananda, R. (1984). Prosodic Disturbance in Aphasia: Vowel Length in Thai. Brain and Language, 23(2), 206-224. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934x(84)90064-6

Garraffa, M., & and Fyndanis, V. (2020). Linguistic theory and aphasia: an overview. Aphasiology, 34(2), 905-926. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2020.1770196

Haley, k., Bays, G. & Ohde, R. (2001). Phonetic properties of aphasic-apraxic speech: A modified narrow transcription analysis. Aphasiology, 15(12), 1125-1142. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687040143000519

Haley, K., Ohde, R. Wertz, T. (2011). Vowel quality in aphasia and apraxia of speech: Phonetic transcription and formant analyses. Aphasiology, 15, 1107-1123.

Johansson, M. (2012). Aphasia and Communication in Everyday Life: Experiences of persons with aphasia, significant others, and speech and language pathologists. Doctoral thesis of Uppsala University.

Karlsson F, & van Doorn, J. (2012). Vowel formant dispersion as a measure of articulation proficiency. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 132(4), 2633–2641. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4746025

Keller, E. (1978). Parameters for vowel substitutions in Broca’s aphasia. Brain and Language, 5(3), 265-285. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934x(78)90026-3

Kempler, D. & Van Lancker, D. (2002). Effect of Speech Task on Intelligibility in Dysarthria: A Case Study of Parkinson’s Disease. Brain and Language, 80(3), 449-464. https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.2001.2602

Kurowski, K., Blumstein, S., Palumbo, C.,Waldstein, R., &Burton, M. (2007). Nasal Consonant Production in Broca’s and Wernicke’s Aphasics: Speech Deficits and Neuroanatomical Correlates. Brain and Language, 100(3), 262-275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2006.10.002

Lee, J., Shaiman, S., & Weismer, G. (2016). Relationship between tongue positions and formant frequencies in female speakers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 139(1), 426–440. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4939894

Liu, H., Tsao, F., & Kuhl, P. (2005). The effect of reduced vowel working space on speech intelligibility in Mandarin-speaking young adults with cerebral palsy. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(6), 3879-3899. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1898623

Martínez-Ferreiro, S., Bastiaanse, R., & Boye, K. (2020). Functional and usage-based approaches to aphasia: The grammatical-lexical distinction and the role of frequency. Aphasiology, 34(8), 927–942. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2019.1615335

Matchin, W. (2018). A neuronal retuning hypothesis of sentence-specificity in Broca’s area. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(5), 1682–1694. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1377-6

Mefferd, A., & Green, J. (2010). The articulatory-to-acoustic relationship in response to speaking rate and loudness manipulations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53(5), 1206–1219. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2010/09-0083)

Menn, L., & Obler, L. (1990). Agrammatic Aphasia: A Cross-Language Narrative Sourcebook. Amsterdam und Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Metoui, M. (1995). Phono Lab: Computerprogramm zur Artikulatorisch-Akustischen Datenanalyse. Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Mainz, 1, 1-100.

Newman, D., & Verhoeven, J. (2002). Frequency analysis of Arabic in connected speech, Antwerp Papers in Linguistics, 100, 77-86.

Paradis, M. (1987). The assessment of bilingual aphasia. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ouden, D., Malyutina, S., Basilakos, A., Bonilha, L., Gleichgerrcht, E., Yourganov, G., Hillis, A. E., Hickok, G., Rorden, C., & Fridriksson, J. (2019). Cortical and structural‐connectivity damage correlated with impaired syntactic processing in aphasia. Human Brain Mapping, 40(7), 2153–2173. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24514

Ryalls, J. (1986). An acoustic study of vowel production in aphasia. Brain and Language, 29(1), 48-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934x(86)90033-7

Schimer, A. (2004). Timing speech: a review of lesion and neuroimaging findings. Cognitive Brain Research, 21(2), 269-287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.04.003

Seddoh, S. (2008). Conceptualisation of deviations in intonation production in aphasia. Aphasiology, 22(12), 1294-1312. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030701640289

Tsao, Y., Weismer, G., & Iqubal, K. (2006). The effect of intertalker speech rate on acoustic vowel space. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(2), 1074-1082. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2149774

Verhaegen, C., Delvaux, V., Fagniart, S., Huet, K., Piccaluga, M. (2020). Phonological and phonetic impairment in aphasic speech: an acoustic study of the voice onset time of six French-speaking aphasic patients. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 34(3), 201-221. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2019.1619095

Williams, S., & Seaver, J. (1986). A comparison of speech sound durations in three syndromes of aphasia. Brain and Language, 29(1), 171-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(86)90041-6

Ziegler, W., & Hoole, P. (1989). A combined acoustic and perceptual analysis of the tense‐lax opposition in aphasic vowel production. Aphasiology, 3, 449‐463.