Aspects of non-native pronunciation in a case of altered accent following stroke (foreign accent syndrome)

Abstract

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) refers to a disorder that involves foreign sounding speech, usually following stroke. This paper presents a case study of an English patient allegedly speaking with a Scottish English accent after right-hemisphere stroke. The results of detailed impressionistic and acoustic analyses are reported, based on a direct comparison of the patient's pre-stroke and post-stroke speech samples. The emphasis is on a comparison of the typical features of Scottish English and phonetic features actually found in the patient's post-stroke speech. The respective roles of prosodic and segmental features in the post-stroke speech sample are also discussed. Rather untypically, prosodic features seem to be affected to a much lesser extent than segmental phonetic features in the patient's post-stroke speech. They are, therefore, less likely to contribute to the perception of a foreign accent.