Acquired language disorders beyond the aphasias: foreign accent syndrome as a neurological, speech, and psychiatric disorder

R. Stewart Longman ^1* Flint D. Schwartz ²

• ¹ University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
• ² Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

This paper examines historical conceptualizations of 'foreign accent syndrome' after brain trauma or as part of a psychiatric presentation, with some comparison to current conceptualizations. Although the classic understanding of the aphasias as language disorders developed between 1861 and 1885, descriptions of non-aphasic speech disorders emerged later. Acquired accent after stroke was first described in 1907 by Pierre Marie (1853Marie ( -1940)), in context of the localizationist/holistic dispute. Early descriptions by Marie, Arnold Pick (1851-1924) and G.H. Monrad-Krohn (1884-1964) identified persisting speech changes after initial aphasia, and from a contemporary perspective, provide clues to the dynamic nature of recovery after brain insult. These cases informed thinking about the neurological underpinnings of prosody and non-language aspects of speech. Further understanding of this disorder awaited contributions from other disciplines, including linguistics, speech language pathology, psychiatry, and neuroimaging. An unusual gap is the lack of reports for psychiatric causes prior to 1960, despite some intriguing clues from Josef Breuer's description of Anna O (1895). The paper explores how historical views continue to shape current conceptualizations of foreign accent syndrome.