Sindrome dell’accento straniero

Abstract

Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is a rare acquired syndrome caused by a stroke or by a trauma that affect the speaker’s accent. There is little consensus on the nature of this disorder. FAS is primarily a disorder of linguistic prosody as 93% of cases of FAS (Coelho and Robb,2001). The case study presented here explores a shift from a Sicilian to a North East variety of Italian accent with the aim of comparing the acoustic-articulatory properties of the FAS variety with the major varieties from Veneto. Native listeners’ perception will be analyzed through a perception test on samples of speech of different varieties of Italian. Sociolinguistic factors such as status and prestige will be taken into account. The analysis, conducted with the Praat software, has shown that the FAS speaker uses a variety that has some Sicilian and some North East traits. Results collected through an ethnographic approach revealed a typology of FAS speaker that has not identified by research so far.