Realisations of Nuclear Pitch Accents in Swabian Dialect and Parkinson’s Dysarthria: a Preliminary Report

The phonetic realisation of pitch accents associated with little sonorant material varies between languages and dialects. For speakers of Northern Standard German it has been shown that nuclear falling accents are truncated while rising accents are compressed. In order to further investigate effects of the German Swabian dialect native Swabian speakers were investigated with regard to truncation and compression. In addition, two Swabian speakers suffering from Parkinson’s disease were examined, because basal ganglia dysfunction – a typical morphological trait of parkinsonian subjects is frequently accompanied by dysarthophonia. Results of the present study indicate that there is no dialect-specific effect between Northern Standard German and Swabian. In contrast, Swabian parkinsonian subjects show compression both in rising and falling nuclear pitch accents. Further investigations of the timing concept (alignment) of the H* peak in monosyllabic test items with nuclear falling accents (H*L) reveal different timing concepts of parkinsonian subjects as compared to healthy control subjects.