| The Aspectual Theory of structural linguistics developed by Henry Lee Smith, Jr. provides the frame of reference for analysis of two alaryngeal speakers. Standard procedures of analysis are applied to the participants' speech samples, with the speakers using two types of external pneumatic reed artificial larynges, the Roswell Park Reed Fistula appliance and the MIT reed appliance. Within the Aspectual framework, the analysis is limited to three levels of the Phonology Stratum and the first level of the Morphology Stratum. These levels include identification of articulations, and the phonetic, phonemic, and morphophonic systems for both speakers. Both, an error analysis showing types of errors and a contrastive analysis comparing the speakers' systems to each other and to the non-pathological system are conducted. Differences are shown in performance and degree of deviation from the norm. The Aspectual analysis of English structure furnishes the standard against which the speakers are evaluated to determine presence of structural units and the extent and range of damage to the language system.;Since a complete linguistic analysis of an extensive corpus is a lengthy process, a concise test procedure and materials which are both diagnostic and predictive are developed. Materials designed to elicit the structural units of the language system at the phonemic level are easily administered and scored to determine the relative quality of speech performance for this increasing population of speakers of a pathological form of the language. This procedure is diagnostic in specifying troublesome segments and positions requiring further investigation. The accuracy of performance produces a numerical score, the quantitative rating of performance (QRP). A QRP scale based on the resulting scores indicates how well a speaker can be expected to perform with a particular speech-augmenting device relative to other speakers.;Statistical tests applied to the QRP scores of the speakers confirm that the results are statistically significant. The QRP distinguishes a real difference in performance that is not due to chance, or inherent experimental error. |
