A pausa na produção da fala com comprometimento neurológico

Abstract

Dysarthria is associated with a deficit in phonemic planning orparalysis of specific speech articulators, besides a frequentvelopharyngeal impairment and expected prosodic alterations. Themain goal of this work is to describe the speech rhythm of a userof a palatal lift protheses by analyzing the way she signals somelinguistic boundaries when reading a short story. Pause durationswere measured and pauses were classified into six syntacticcategories. The correlation coefficient between categories anddurations is 62%, signaling that not all variance can be solelyexplained by syntax, but also by considering prosody as the interplaybetween linguistic knowledge and constraints of a biomechanicalsystem. Despite her neuromotor impairment, the subject is able touse pauses to signal a prosodic hierarchy.