Changes of breathing activity under different focus conditions
Résumé
This work investigates the relationships among between thoracic volume changes, measured via Respitrace, subglottal pressure variation, and sentence stress in ten speakers of German. The plateau of the intraoral pressure (Pio) during productions of /t/ in target words, measured via a pressure transducer on the palate, was taken as an indication of subglottal pressure. Acoustic measures of vowel duration and intensity verified that speakers realized the stress as intended (viz., left-focused, right-focused, or not focused). The Pio data showed that sentential stress patterns were reflected in the Pio peak measures and in the Pio slope in the target t#t sequence; respitrace measures of thoracic volume did not show reliable differences across focus conditions, perhaps because the method is not sufficiently sensitive.