The influence of tonicity on the voice production

Abstract

Background: Desonorization processes is one of the most frequent phonological processes presenting the higher evolutive difficulty on the therapy of phonological disorders in clinical practice. Studies show variables such as: manner and place of articulation, environment and elevation of sequent vowel, syllable stress and position in the word, as interfering on the process of acquisition of the sound trace. Objective: To investigate the influence of tone on the production of trace sound of two subjects. Method: two children were evaluated, one with typical phonological acquisition (S1), and the other with phonological devoicing process (S2), both aged 5:0. It was applied to the subjects an instrument with minimal pairs to contrast the value of the trace sound created to elicit the subjects’ speech and provide acoustic and perceptual analysis of voicing in their speech. Results: It was shown that S1 presents more sound in stressed syllables, in agreement with studies that suggest the stressed syllables as environments conductive to the realization of sound. Otherwise, S2 showed higher percentages of sound in unstressed syllables. The difference between the two subjects seems to be the vocal tensionon the production of stressed and unstressed syllables. Conclusion: We can say that the variable tone is treated differently in the two types of phonological development, emphasizing the importance of evaluating other production characters, especially the sequent vowel, place and manner of articulation.