Analysis of a case of the foreign accent syndrome in terms of the framework of gestural phonology

Abstract

Brain damage which results in aphasia or apraxia of speech frequently causes deviant articulation; and in a limited number of cases the patients’ speech takes on characteristics normally associated with a dialect that is not their own, or it resembles the performance of a non-native speaker of the language. This condition is referred to as the foreign accent syndrome (FAS). FAS has been classified as an apraxic condition, a motor speech disorder in which the capacity to program the positioning of speech musculature and the sequencing of muscle movements for the volitional production of speech, has been disturbed. The present study is an analysis of the speech of a Norwegian FAS patient who after having suffered a stroke, developed what sounded like an English accent when speaking Norwegian. Her speech exhibited deviant features both on the segmental and on the prosodic level: deviant vowel and consonant articulations, deviant rhythmical patterns and deviant pitch patterns. This complex pattern of deviant features can be accounted for in terms of dysfunction of specific components in a gestural phonological model. The deviations can all be seen as the result of abnormal scaling or abnormal phasing of gestures.