ABSTRACT
Prosody is a complex process that involves modulation of pitch, loudness, duration,
and linearity in the acoustic stream to serve linguistic and affective communication
goals. It arises from the interaction of distributed neural networks that may be anatomically
and functionally lateralized. Intrinsic prosody is mediated largely through left hemisphere
mechanisms and encompasses those elements of linguistic microstructure (e.g., syllabic
magnitudes and durations, basic consonantal and vocalic gesture specifications, and
so) that yield the segmental aspects of speech. Extrinsic prosody is processed primarily
by right hemisphere (RH) mechanisms and involves manipulation of intonation across
longer perceptual groupings. Intrinsic prosody deficits can lead to several core symptoms
of speech apraxia such as difficulty with utterance initiation and syllable transitionalization
and may lead to the establishment of inappropriate syllable boundaries. The intrinsic
prosody profiles associated with acquired apraxia of speech, developmental speech
apraxia, and ataxic dysarthria may aid in the clinical differentiation of these disorders.
KEYWORDS
Intrinsic prosody - extrinsic prosody - dysprosody in apraxia of speech