No abstract

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) usually reveal speech disorders and, among other symptoms, the alteration of speech rhythm. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to test the validity of two acoustic parameters—%V, vowel percentage and VtoV, the mean interval between two consecutive vowel onset points—for the identification of rhythm variation in early-stage PD speech and (2) to analyze the effect of PD on speech rhythm in two different speaking tasks: reading passage and monolog. A group of 20 patients with early-stage PD was involved in this study and compared with 20 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). The results of the acoustic analysis confirmed that %V is a useful cue for early-stage PD speech characterization, having significantly higher values in the production of patients with PD than the values in HC speech. A simple speaking task, such as the reading task, was found to be more effective than spontaneous speech in the detection of rhythmic variations.

The present study investigates the prosody of yes/no questions (in comparison with statements) in Chinese learners and native speakers of Italian. Acoustic analyses and a perceptual test were performed, in order to identify the main trends in non-native productions. Results show the relevance of prosody, which differentiates elementary, intermediate and advanced Chinese learners of Italian. Listening tests based on prosody transplantation also suggest that non-native segments with a native Italian prosody are rated as less accented than are native Italian segments with a non-native prosody. Similar trends were found, overall, in terms of question/assertion discrimination, confirming the relative importance of prosody. These findings could be helpful for teachers and learners of Italian as a foreign language.

No abstract

No abstract