title: Stronger accent following a stroke: the case of a trilingual with aphasia.
abstract: This study documents patterns of change in speech production in a multilingual with aphasia following a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). EC, a right-handed Hebrew-English-French trilingual man, had a left fronto-temporo-parietal CVA, after which he reported that his (native) Hebrew accent became stronger in his (second language) English. Recordings of his pre- and post-CVA speech permitted an investigation of changes in his accent. In sentence- and segment-listening tasks, native American English listeners (n = 13 and 15, respectively) judged EC's pre- and post-CVA speech. EC's speech was perceived as more foreign-accented, slow, strained and hesitant, but not less intelligible, post-CVA. Acoustic analysis revealed less coarticulation and longer vowel- and word-durations post-CVA. This case extends knowledge about perceptual and acoustic changes in speech production in multilinguals following CVAs. It is suggested that EC's stronger accent post-CVA may have resulted from damage to the neuronal networks that led to impairment in his other language domains.
authors: Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University , New York, NY, USA. elevy@tc.columbia.edu
authors: Erika S
authors: ES
authors: Levy
authors: Mira
authors: M
authors: Goral
authors: Catharine
authors: C
authors: Castelluccio  De Diesbach
authors: Franzo
authors: F
authors: Law