Abstract
The study examines the intelligibility, articulation and acoustic features of the vowels and plosives of a male subject (GS) who has undergone total glossectomy. Overall the subject was found to be between 58 per cent and 65 per cent comprehensible according to stringent auditory tests. Videotape analysis and EMG confirmed that GS makes all plosive consonants biblabi-ally, although he introduces extra lip protrusion to distinguish ‘alveolar' from ‘bilabial' articulations. However, individual plosives were not well recognised. Vowel production was investigated using videofluoroscopy. GS was observed to be effectively constricting his vocal tract in the pharyngeal region by compensatory use of the epiglottis and the grafted flap which re-lined the floor of the mouth. Acoustically GS displays a greatly reduced vowel space from normal. the study shows that compensatory articulatory strategies are available to the glossectomee and that perception of his speech is facilitated by the large amount of redundancy in normal speech. the conclusion is that glossectomy does not necessarily prevent the recovery of functional speech of sufficient intelligibility to allow social rehabilitation of the glossectomy patient.
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