Objectives/hypothesis: The aim of this study was to determine the acoustical differences between normal and tracheoesophageal Polish speakers during Polish vowel production.
Methods: Formant frequencies, namely, the first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies for 6 Polish vowels produced by 11 normal and 11 tracheoesophageal speakers, were analyzed using statistical analysis of variance and discriminant analysis.
Results: Spectral analysis showed that the F1 and F2 values of Polish vowels produced by tracheoesophageal speakers were significantly higher than those produced by normal speakers, with the exception of the F2 value of /i/ produced by tracheoesophageal speakers. Analysis of variance showed significant differences between speeches based on the F1 and F2 formant frequencies. Discriminant analysis based on the formant frequencies for F1 and F2 exhibited 73.33% of the mean classification score for tracheoesophageal speakers and 96.36% for normal speakers.
Conclusions: Tracheoesophageal speakers exhibit higher F1 and F2 formant frequencies, with the exception of the F2 value for the vowel /i/ than normal speakers. Discriminant analysis showed that the classification process for TE speech exhibits lower accuracy due to the poorer classification of the vowels /i/, /u/, and /y/.
Keywords: Classification; Discriminant analysis; Formant frequency; Tracheoesophageal speech; Vowels.
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