"¿Yo hablo o él/ella habló?" ¿Cómo contrarrestar la tendencia al "equal stress" en la apraxia del habla para marcar las diferencias acentuales entre formas verbales en español

This preliminary study sought to investigate whether participants with apraxia of speech are able to mark stress patterns that convey verbal morphological values in Spanish (amo vs amo). Two groups of three participants (apraxia of speech and control) performed three tasks (sentence denomination, sentence reading and word reading). Produc-tion was analysed acoustically and linear regression models with mixed effects were carried out to determine the effect of group, stress pattern and task on each acoustic parameter. Results show reduced stress contrasts in the apraxic group and inter-group differences for each acoustic parameter. However listeners are globally able to identify the intended stress pattern. We interpret our results in the light of the ongoing debate about apraxia of speech.