An acoustic investigation of pitch accent contrasts in the speech of a Norwegian patient with the foreign accent syndrome

Abstract

In 2005 a middle aged Norwegian man became aphasic as a result of a left hemisphere stroke. After a few months his aphasic condition had improved. He was mildly agrammatic with word finding problems and what sounded like a foreign accent. Deviant prosody was an important feature of his foreign sounding speech, in particular the lack of a clear distinction between the two Norwegian word tones (pitch accents). Acoustic analysis of his speech revealed limited F0 variation at word and utterance level and a similar F0 pattern on the two word tones. His deviant prosody is assumed to be the result of reduced ability to produce appropriate F0 variation, a dysarthric condition. There was no clear indication of apraxia of speech.