Production of tongue twisters by speakers with partial glossectomy

Abstract

A partial glossectomy can affect speech production. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of the presence of a tumour as well as the glossectomy surgery on the patients’ production of tongue twisters with the sounds [t] and [k]. Fifteen patients with tongue cancer and 10 healthy controls took part in the study. The outcome measures were the patients’ speech acceptability, rate of errors, the time needed to produce the tongue twisters, pause duration between item repetitions and the tongue shape during the production of the consonants [t] and [k] before and after surgery. The patients’ speech acceptability deteriorated after the surgery. Compared to controls, the patients’ productions of the tongue twisters were slower but not more errorful. Following the surgery, their speed of production did not change, but the rate of errors was higher. Pause duration between items was longer in the patients than in the controls but did not increase from before to after surgery. Analysis of the patients’ tongue shapes for the productions of [t] and [k] indicated a higher elevation following the surgery for the patients with flap reconstructions. The results demonstrated that the surgical resection of the tongue changed the error rate but not the speed of production for the patient. The differences in pause duration also indicate that the tumour and the surgical resection of the tongue may impact the phonological planning of the tongue twister.

• Glossectomy
• speech errors
• speech production
• tongue
• tongue resection
• tongue twister
• ultrasound

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the help provided by Dr. Jeff Mielke with the smoothing spline ANOVA. The Ultrasonographic Contour Analyzer for Tongue Surfaces (Ultra-CATS) software was created by Jiayun Gu and Kevin Cannons and can be downloaded from www.flintbox.com.