The prosodic effects of using fabric face mask in reading a narrative

• Autor(a) principal: Benevides, Aline de Lima
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Domínios de Lingu@gem
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/dominiosdelinguagem/article/view/67959
• topic: Prosódia; Fonética; Fonologia; Disfarce de voz; Máscara de pano; Prosody; phonetics; Phonology; Voice Disguise; Fabric Face Mask

This paper investigates whether fabric face mask can affect prosodic parameters through reading tasks of a narrative and, even, whether such changes resemble voice disguises, such as those used by individuals in forensic practice. For this purpose, three experimental conditions were contrasted: normal reading (control condition), reading with a mask and reading with a pencil, produced by four native speakers of BP, in a pilot study. The following parameters were analyzed: rate of speech, rate of articulation, pauses, duration of V-V units (BARBOSA, 2019), accent groups and tones. The results show that the V-V units, the pauses, and the accent group are the prosodic parameters affected by the use of the cloth mask. In addition, reading with a mask does not exhibit similar behavior to reading with a pencil, nor does normal reading. On the contrary, reading with a mask exposes intermediate behaviors. Thus, linguistic studies that focus on prosodic aspects should consider the mask also as a voice disguise, since it can change some prosodic parameters.