Acoustic features to characterize sentence accent production in dysarthric speech

•An objective acoustic analysis of speech was performed with an automatic algorithm.•New relevant features correlated with sentence accent in native speakers of Dutch were detected.•Automatic classification between accented and unaccented syllables shows a high reliability using the selected feature sets.•The introduced features enable a better understanding and description of different accent strategies between healthy speakers and speakers with dysarthria.•This knowledge may allow therapists to develop and adjust methods for the rehabilitation of sentence accent.