Marilyn Y. Chen
Res. Lab. of Electron. and Dept. of Health Sci. and Technol., MIT, Rm. 36-511, Cambridge, MA 02139
Ralph Metson
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston, MA 02114
The aim of this paper is to determine the effects of surgical alterations
of nasal anatomy on the spectral characteristics and perceptual attributes of
speech. Five patients who underwent endoscopic nasal surgery were recorded
prior to surgery, and 1 week and 1 month after surgery. The utterances were six
vowel types adjacent to nasal consonants and stop consonants. In addition to
endonasal surgery enlarging the sinus openings, some patients had a correction
of deviated septum, resection of a turbinate, or removal of polyps. Acoustic
analysis was carried out for nasalized vowels, non-nasalized vowels, and the
nasal consonants /m/ and /n/. Significant differences in spectral properties
were observed in the consonants and nasalized vowels recorded before and after
surgery. For example, changes were found in the prominence of extra peaks due
to nasalization and the first formant bandwidth was narrower for the nasal
consonants and nasalized vowels. All except one patient perceived a change in
their speech post-operatively. Attempts were made to account for the speech
changes by incorporating the anatomical alterations caused by surgery into a
speech production model. [Work supported by NSF NIH, and LeBel fellowship.]