Comparison of prosodic characteristics by question type in left- and right-hemisphere-injured stroke patients*

Abstract

This study examined the characteristics of linguistic prosody in terms of cerebral lateralization in three groups of 9 healthy speakers and 14 speakers with a history of stroke (7 with left hemisphere damage (LHD), 7 with right hemisphere damage (RHD)). Specifically, prosodic characteristics related to speech rate, duration, pitch, and intensity were examined in three types of interrogative sentences (wh-questions, yes-no questions, alternative questions) with auditory perceptual evaluation. As a result, the statistically significant key variables showed flaws in production of the linguistic prosody in the speakers with LHD. The statistically significant variables were more insufficiently produced for wh-questions than for yes-no and alternative questions. This trend was particularly noticeable in variables related to pitch and speech rate. This result suggests that when Korean speakers process linguistic prosody, such as that of lexico-semantic and syntactic information in interrogative sentences, the left hemisphere seems to be superior to the right hemisphere.