SPEECH RHYTHM OF A WOMAN WITH FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME (FAS)

Beate Wendt1, Ines Bose2, Henning Scheich1, Michael Sailer3 & Hermann Ackermann4
1Leibniz-Institute for Neurobiology; 2Martin-Luther-University of Halle/S.; Department of Speech Communication and Phonetics; 3MEDIAN Klinik NRZ Magdeburg; 4Eberhard-Karls-Universitätsklinikum Tübingen; Clinic for Nerology

ID 1348
[full paper]

This paper deals with a case of FAS (a German speaking woman with a Russian accent), a rare form of speech disorder. We focused on the patient's prosody while reading aloud, especially on temporal structures (speech rate and speech rhythm) in comparison to features of a Russian and a German native speaker. The aim of the auditory and acoustic analysis was to identify potential key features of pronunciation which could be characteristic of Russian German speech and which might lead listeners to judge the patient's speech as sounding Russian. There are similarities between the patient and the Russian native speaker with regard to some phonetic features (structuring of prosodic phrases). But the patient's speech often shows a lack of some of the most typical features of true Russian foreign accent, and there are more similarities between the Russian and the German native Speaker.

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