Acoustic correlates of Spanish stress in fluent and non-fluent aphasia: A preliminary study

The aim of this study is to determine whether fluent and non-fluent aphasics preserve the acoustic marks of lexical stress in a repetition task involving regular oxytone and paroxytone disyllabic Spanish words in isolation. Acoustic analyses of each syllable (duration, F0, intensity) were performed. These data were then subjected to mixed-effects regression analyses, separately for oxytones and paroxytones, with subjects and items as random variables, and group, stress, syllable structure and all the possible interactions as predictors. The results showed a different use of acoustic cues to lexical stress in both fluent and non-fluent aphasics as compared to controls. In non-fluent aphasics, abnormal acoustic characteristics were found that involved not only timing aspects but also F0 and intensity cues. In fluent aphasics, a “subtle phonetic deficit” was observed in lexical stress processing, especially in oxytones with complex first syllable structure.