Perception of foreign accent syndrome speech and its relation to segmental characteristics

Abstract

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is an acquired neurogenic disorder characterized by altered speech that sounds foreign-accented. This study presents a British subject perceived to speak with an Italian (or Greek) accent after a brainstem (pontine) stroke. Native English listeners rated the strength of foreign accent and impairment they perceived in speech of the FAS subject, alongside that of two native English speakers and Italian, Greek, and French L2 speakers acting as controls. The FAS subject was perceived to be as foreign-sounding as the L2 control speakers, but was also perceived as mildly impaired. The FAS subject's own perception of accents was also explored and it was found that his ability to distinguish presence and absence of accent does not seem to be affected. The relationship between listeners' perceptions and features of the FAS speech is explored via correlational statistics and qualitative analysis. Impressionistic phonetic analysis, supplemented by acoustic analysis, confirmed a number of features consistent with a typical Italian (and also Greek) accent and the Italian and Greek L2 speakers. A pre-stroke and a post-stroke sample from the FAS subject were compared and the nature of post-stroke changes in segmental realizations is discussed.

• Foreign accent syndrome
• perception of foreign accent
• perception of impairment
• motor speech disorders
• apraxia of speech

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the FAS subject for his participation, Jill House, Francis Nolan and Chris Lee for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, John Coleman and Jennifer Gurd for sharing the FAS subject's case history and neuropsychological assessment results, Sophie Scott for sharing MRI scan interpretation, Volker Dellwo, Mark Huckvale and Mike Coleman for technical support, and also Jyrki Tuomainen, Gordon Craig and Paul Iverson for their assistance with the statistical analysis.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.