LINGUIST List 5.44

Wed 12 Jan 1994

Disc: Foreign accent syndrome

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1. Lyle Jenkins, Foreign accent syndrome (FAS)
2. AHARRIS - Alan Harris, RE: 5.22 Qs: Breath, Mass Nouns, Gender, Foreign Accent Syndrome

 Paul Chapin asks about "Foreign Accent Syndrome" concerning an English
speaker from Massachusetts who walked away from a car accident speaking
with a French accent.

A fairly recent review of some of these cases of foreign accent syndrome (FAS)
can be found in Takayama et. al. ("A case of foreign accent syndrome without
aphasia caused by a lesion of the left precentral gyrus") in _Neurology_
1993;43:1361-1363. The abstract follows:

"We report a case of foreign accent syndrome (FAS) without aphasia. The
 patient was a right-handed, 44-year-old woman, a native Japanese. Disposition
 and inversion of pitch accents and appearance of unnecessary stress accents
 made her speech sound foreign, like that of Korean. MRI demonstrated an
 infarction in the middle fifth of the posterior lateral aspect of the left
 precentral gyrus. Limited motor cortex damage causes FAS withoui
 dysarthria, apraxia of speech, or aphasia."

 Also mentioned are the cases of a
* English-Portuguese sounding Chinese
* American sounding Eastern European, Slavic, French, Dutch, or Scandinavian
* English speaker sounding Nordic
* English speaker sounding French

Biolinguistics Institute (biolingworld.std.com)

Message 2: RE: 5.22 Qs: Breath, Mass Nouns, Gender, Foreign Accent Syndrome

re: foreign accent syndrome (Chapin)
I read somehwere (God knows!) that this phenomenon had been linked variously
with "speaking in tongues" and the syndrome identified with the man who
mistook his wife for a hat (the mirror image anomaly or whatever it is
called).I do not know how or why but only mention it because clearly someone
has been trying to piece all of this stuff together previously.
a.

======================================================================
Alan C. Harris, Ph. D. telno: off:
Professor, Communication/Linguistics 818-885-2853/2874
Speech Communication Department hm:
California State University, Northridge 818-780-8872
SPCH CSUN fax: 818-885-2663
Northridge, CA 91330-8257
 Internet: AHARRISVAX.CSUN.EDU