Diagnosing Dysarthria in Adults. A New Speech Assessment Method for Polish, English, and Spanish

9 1. Physiological Foundations of Speech (Material to Dysarthria) distorted (for discussion on prominence, accent, and rhythm cf. also Cruttenden ([1962] 2014: 270–304). In Spanish there are two main principles governing stress, i.e., (1) if a noun ends with a vowel (a, o, e, i) or with the consonant s or n, then the stress falls on the penultimate syllable, e.g. casa ‘house,’ padre ‘father’; (2) if a singular noun ends with a consonant other than those mentioned above (r, t, l, d, etc.), then the stress usually falls on the ultimate syllable, e.g. universidad ‘university,’ feliz ‘happy,’ estar ‘to be.’ Spanish adjectives, adverbs, and verbs in present tense mostly follow the same principle; in other tenses, verb stress may also be governed by morphological principles. Another form of stress attested in Spanish is the graphic accent (acento gráfico), marking a departure from the above principles. Here, the graphic stress appears on the vowel in the strongest syllable, as in está ‘is’ or fácil ‘easy.’ The graphic stress is also used to distinguish between two one-syllable words, e.g. aun ‘even’ vs. aún ‘still/yet’ or te ‘you’ vs. té ‘tea,’ etc. Interrogative pronouns are obligatorily marked with the graphic stress, e.g.: (4) ¿Qué quieres? Apart from that, the graphic stress appears in all words in which the antepenultimate syllable is stressed, e.g. sábado ‘Saturday.’ The same principle is followed in complex forms of verbs, e.g. dando vs. dán-do-lo (inflected and compounded forms of dar ‘to give’). The graphic stress is also marked over the stressed vowels i and u, when they neighbor the vowels a, e, o. In such cases i and u do not form diphthongs but stand on their own as separate syllables, e.g. pa-ís /paˈis/ ‘country’ (if there is a mute ⟨h⟩, it is disregarded). Since the stress falls on the same syllable in the singular and in the plural, when the latter is created for nouns and adjectives by adding the ending -es, the word gains one more syllable, which may in turn necessitate adding the graphic stress or removing it from the plural number. Typically, this kind of situation occurs in words ending with n or s, with the graphic stress falling on the ultimate syllable (e.g. inglés ‘English’), cf. e.g. Lang (1990). 1.3.3. Intonation patterns Intonation involves modulating one’s voice by lowering or raising the pitch, which adds a melodic quality to an utterance. In all three languages considered herein, i.e. Polish, English, and Spanish, intonation carries information about the speaker’s intention concerning the speech act type (interrogative or declarative) and helps in delineating phrases and utterances. Generally,

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