Formant Structure of Vowels Produced By Hindi Esophageal Speakers: A Comparative Study

Aim: To investigate the characteristics of vocal tract resonance in Hindi Esophageal Speakers. Methodology: Five normal Hindi speakers and five Hindi esophageal speakers participated in this study. They were asked to produce the three corner vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ in the three different conditions like nonsustained, sustained and word level. The average first three formant frequencies F1, F2, and F3 from these vowels were obtained and submitted for statistical comparisons. For each formant, the formant frequencies measured from the medial 80% of the vowel partition were averaged and data obtained from esophageal speakers were compared with that obtained from laryngeal speakers. Result & Discussion: The results indicated that esophageal speakers were associated with significantly higher formant frequencies (F1,F2 and F3) when compared with laryngeal speakers .This finding suggests that formant frequencies changes across vowels were systematic and similar for esophageal and laryngeal speakers are consistent with those previously reported in English. It can be concluded that vocal tract transmission has been changed in esophageal speakers of Hindi after laryngectomy. It also suggests that pharyngoesophageal (PE), which is used as neoglottis by esophageal speakers, is located higher than vocal folds in normal speakers. Summary and Conclusion: Thus, by comparing this result of Hindi speakers with the previous studies, it is noted that the difference in formant characteristics of vowels between esophageal speech and normal speech to be similar across languages. Therefore, the factor of language difference seems to have little effect to the change in vocal tract transmission after laryngectomy.