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.

Accent attribution in speakers with Foreign Accent Syndrome

“…Although the results of Di Dio et al (2006) and Dankovicova & Hunt (2011) are thought provoking, it has to be recognized that these experiments had several limitations, the first of which is that in both cases a very small number of FAS speakers were presented against the background of a highly restricted range of foreign accents. Furthermore, the listener panels were quite uniform in that they consisted of a single group of naïve listeners so that the results may not be generalizable to other groups of listeners with varying degrees of experience with foreign accents.…”

“…The speaker from Paris had developed 'a noticeable Alsatian accent which he did not have before' (Marie 1907: 159 ;own translation). Since this statement about 50 cases have appeared in the literature (Dankovicova & Hunt, 2011) which have been classified by Verhoeven & Mariën (2010) into three distinct taxonomical types: neurogenic, psychogenic and mixed. In neurogenic FAS the accent change results from damage to the central nervous system.…”

“…The perception of foreign accentedness in FAS was investigated in Di Dio, Schulz & Gurd (2006) and Dankovicova & Hunt (2011). Di Dio et al (2006 studied the accent identification abilities of naïve judges concerning FAS speech samples and real foreign accented speech.…”

“…The second study into the perception of FAS was carried out by Dankovicova & Hunt (2011) who investigated the impressions of foreignness and impairment in one single FAS patient whose speech was assessed in the context of speech samples of 2 native speaker controls and 3 speakers with a real foreign accent (French, Italian and Greek).…”

Revisión sistemática en el Síndrome del Acento Extranjero: intervención y terapia del lenguaje.

“…De hecho, en el estudio llevado a cabo por Dankovicová y Hunt (2011), un grupo control de sujetos extranjeros es expuesto frente a uno de pacientes con SAE, y en estos casos los evaluadores acústicos fueron incapaces de discriminar acústicamente diferencias significativas entre ambos grupos. Si bien es cierto, que estos resultados difieren en evidencia ante el estudio de Verhoeven et al (2013).…”