Lingual frenectomy and alveolar tap production: an acoustic and perceptual study.

In this phonetic study, productions of the consonant in the stressed syllable position of the word arara as produced by 13 subjects with short and/or anterior lingual frenulum were compared before and after lingual frenectomy. The results from the measurement of the stressed consonant duration and from the identification of the consonant manners of articulation based on the inspection of spectral characteristics are discussed and related to the answers to a perceptual identification test. After surgery, the number of tap productions did not increase, but alveolar productions did. These clinically relevant findings show frenectomy improved tongue mobility, but, as temporal controls were not totally re-established after surgery and 6-month speech therapy sessions, the production of the alveolar tap remained largely unchanged.