Scottish Standard English Research Articles

Structural and dialectal effects on pitch peak alignment in two varieties of British English

We report three experiments, based on test sentences read aloud, on the influence of sentence position and phonological vowel length on the alignment of accent-related f 0 peaks in Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British English (RP). One experiment deals with prenuclear accent peaks and the other two with nuclear accent peaks. Three findings confirm reports in the recent literature on several other European languages. First, as has been reported for Dutch [Ladd, D.R., Mennen, I., & Schepman, A. (2000). Phonological conditioning of peak alignment in rising pitch accents in Dutch. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107, 2685–2696], the alignment of prenuclear peaks is later with phonologically short vowels than with long ones, and the effect cannot be explained by actual vowel duration but appears to reflect syllable structure. Second, nuclear peaks are aligned much earlier (relative to the accented vowel) than prenuclear peaks, and, as in Dutch [Schepman, A., Lickley, R., & Ladd, D.R. (2006). Effects of vowel length and ‘right context’ on the alignment of Dutch nuclear accents. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 1–28], the effect of syllable structure appears to be absent in nuclear accents; instead, their alignment is strongly influenced by whether the accented syllable is in utterance-final position. Third, as in a number of other studies, we find evidence for differences of phonetic detail between languages or language varieties: both nuclear and prenuclear peaks are aligned later in SSE than in RP, and nuclear peaks appear to be aligned earlier in English than in Dutch.

There Is More to Being a Scotsman than Putting on a Kilt and Trilling your /r/s. A Study of Linguistic Credibility in the Hollywood Movie Braveheart

This article investigates the linguistic credibility of the Hollywood movie Braveheart (1995). After first discussing the producers’ choice of rejecting the reality of historically correct language use, in favour of transposing modern day socioliguistic realities, a phonetic analysis of the leading actor’s (Mel Gibson’s) attempts at a Standard Scottish English accent (SSE) is carried out. The analysis is mainly carried out at a phonemc level, where some stereotypically Scottish consonants and vowel sounds are analyzed. However, the focus of the analysis is on how well the actor has managed to imitate the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (or Aitken’s law). The result of the analysis is that Gibson has made quite an effort at Scotsman by a native SSE speaker, his efforts would probably be enough for the American (and international) viewers who are the primary audience of the film. It could be said that Mel Gibson is aiming for a more nuanced accent than just a farcical stereotype of SSE. Mel Gibson must have found that there is more to being a Scotsman than putting on a kilt and trilling your /r/s.

The pronunciation of Scottish Standard English in Lerwick, Shetland

Previous research on Shetland speech has not explicitly dealt with speech forms leaning towards Scottish Standard English (SSE) but has focused on Shetland dialect, the local Scots dialect. This paper argues that a local accent of SSE can be identified in Shetland, especially for speakers in Lerwick, the largest town in Shetland. The accent has not been previously fully described, and this paper presents an analysis of systemic, distributional and realizational aspects of the vowel and consonant systems, based on data from a recent survey (Sundkvist 2004). It is suggested that the Lerwick accent displays a phonemic inventory and lexical distribution similar to that commonly reported for mainland accents of SSE, with the exception of a somewhat larger inventory of vowel phonemes. At the level of phonetic realization, the Lerwick accent shares several features with mainland varieties of SSE, but displays a number of localized features in addition.

Some Reflections on the Language of Contemporary Scottish Prose

A northern variety of Old English developed in Scotland into what has become known as Scots. This language of the Scottish court and literature prior to the Acts of Union was abandoned by both king and poets after the Union with England. English replaced Scots in public institutions, to schools and literature. The most fatal development was the change of attitude of the Scottish themselves, who came to regard Scots as an inferior variety of English. There have been repeated attempts by Scottish writers, to revive Scots as a national language of Scotland. Since the 1970s a number of projects have been launched to study the present state of Scots with the aim of initiating a language policy which would reintroduce Scots into public life as one of the national languages of Scotland. A number of Scottish authors have used Scots in their works. This paper will examine the language of some contemporary prose texts seeking to establish the density of Scots elements and estimate their place on the scale between Standard Scottish English and Scots, which may be one of the means of establishing an acceptable standard variety.

Changes in the dialect of Livingston

This study investigates language change in the New Town of Livingston in Scotland, comparing the speech of original inhabitants of one of the villages swallowed up by the New Town with that of children brought up in the modern conurbation. The study focuses on three variables, two consonants characteristic of Scottish speech, the voiceless velar fricative and the labiovelar voiceless fricative, plus the innovation of TH-fronting. The situation is shown to be one of rapid and ongoing change in which there is a progressive loss of the Scots and Standard Scottish English pronunciation, with intermediate stages being observed in many of the young speakers. In comparison with girls, boys appear to be both innovators of change and conservers of local informal variants at the expense of standard variants.

An Introduction to English Phonology (review)

Reviewed by: An introduction to English phonology by April McMahon Curt Rice An introduction to English phonology. By April McMahon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 148. ISBN 0-19-521891-4. $19.95. This slender volume devotes approximately three-fourths of its 148 pages to the phoneme. After a brief introductory chapter, allophonic variation and psychological reality are introduced in Ch. 2. Ch. 3 lays out the articulatory phonetics of English consonants, and Ch. 4 builds on this by introducing a basic set of binary features as well as a simple rule formalism. This chapter also highlights topics such as major class features and natural classes. Ch. 5 touches on a few more advanced topics, including a discussion of the complementary distribution of /h/ and /ŋ/ as an example of phonetic dissimilarity and defective distribution. Neutralization is presented, as is the archiphoneme and some of its shortcomings. The discussion of the phoneme moves with Ch. 7 into the domain of the vowel, following Ch. 6’s presentation of the phonetics of vowels, which again relies on the familiar articulatory criteria. The discussion of vowel phonemes includes the introduction of selected facts about different dialects, beginning with Received Pronunciation and General American. These are eventually supplemented with Standard Scottish English and the ‘extraterritorial’ New Zealand English. The presentation of the phoneme and related principles which dominate the first seven chapters of the book are tied together in Ch. 8 through a discussion of types of variation (systemic, realizational, and distributional). The final two chapters briefly take up suprasegmental phonology, offering a standard view of syllable structure and related topics such as phonotactics, sonority sequencing, and onset maximization as well as some discussion of stress assignment. The ten chapters each conclude with problems and suggested readings. Students will find discussion of the problems at the end of the book along with a bibliography and index. This easily readable book is, then, for the most part a presentation of one of the most central concepts in the history of phonology, namely the phoneme, and it may be appropriate for students having their initial contact with the field. Points for potential improvement include the basic definition of phonetics and phonology given in Ch. 1: The author writes that ‘phonetics is universal, while phonology is language specific’ (4). Even though this view is subsequently moderated, allowing phonologists an interest in the universal, too, it nonetheless misses the distinction between the physical and cognitive sides of speech production. The book includes at least two theoretical excursions which I doubt leave students much wiser. One, mentioned above, regards the archiphoneme. Given the target audience for the book, both the presentation and critique of this notion might just as well have been left aside. The other involves the page-long presentation and critique of optimality theory (OT). Without going into detail, it seems to me that failure to mention the central OT tenet of constraint violability will render incomprehensible any attempt to juxtapose ‘important’ constraints with constraints having ‘no obvious effect’. Although brevity is clearly a goal for the book, no one can do OT—or any theory—in a page. So why try? Curt Rice University of Tromsø Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

The Relationship between Vowel and Consonant Duration in Orkney and Shetland Dialects

In Shetland dialect, the northernmost branch of Lowland Scots, stressed monosyllables, when closed by a consonant, generally contain either a durationally short vowel followed by a durationally long consonant, or a long vowel followed by a short consonant. This feature, first described in the 1950s, can most likely be ascribed to the Scandinavian substratum of the dialect. Although several experimental investigations into the duration of Scottish vowels have been carried out recently, most of them in the light of the Scottish vowel length rule, none of them so far have looked at Shetland dialect or the relationship between the duration of the vowel and the final consonant. In the present study we will examine vowel and final consonant duration in monosyllabic words in both Shetland and Orkney dialects, as well as in Standard Scottish English and Standard Norwegian, in order to establish whether in Shetland dialect, durationally short consonants follow durationally long vowels and vice versa and if so, if this is indeed a feature peculiar to Shetland.

English Phonology: An Introduction

This is an introduction to the phonology of present-day English. It deals principally with three varieties of English: 'General American', Southern British 'Received Pronunciation' and 'Scottish Standard English'. It offers a systematic and detailed discussion of the features shared by these major accents, and explains some major differences. Other varieties of English - Australian and New Zealand English, South African English and Hiberno-English - are also discussed briefly. Without focusing on current phonological theory and its evolution, the author demonstrates the importance of 'theory', in whatever shape or form, in phonological argumentation. The book also includes a helpful introductory section on speech sounds and their production, and detailed suggestions for further reading follow each chapter. This clear and helpful textbook will be welcomed by all students of English language and linguistics.

UNDERSPECIFICATION THEORY AND THE ANALYSIS OF DIALECT DIFFERENCES IN LEXICAL PHONOLOGY

There has recently been an upsurge in interest in variation in both synchronic and diachronic linguistics. This paper begins with two hypotheses: first, that phonologists ought these days to be interested in how variation is analysed, and secondly, that the Standard Generative approach involving underlying identity is not the way to do it. It is shown that a particular difference between RP and Standard Scottish English can be appropriately analysed within a Lexical Phonology allowing underlying discrepancies between dialects. However, the introduction of underspecification into the model allows the (badly motivated) reintroduction of underlying identity. The paper concludes with a survey of further problems with underspecification theory.

Strict Cyclicity, Structure Preservation and the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule

The analysis of vowel length in Standard Scottish English (SSE) and Scots dialects has proved problematical for some time now. With most analyses the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule (SVLR) is taken to lengthen underlyingly short vowels, and the principal problem with this approach has been in giving a phonological characterization of the set of vowels which act as input to the rule. A complicating factor here is the fact that the set of input vowels seems to vary across dialects. A recent analysis by Anderson (to appear), couched in dependency-phonology (DP) representations which allow for non-specification, argues rather persuasively that SVLR is a shortening operation on underlyingly long vowels, thus resolving the problem of the phonological definition of the input set (for some dialects at least). It also goes some way towards dealing with variation across dialects by giving an explanation for the variable behaviour of the lower mid vowel [ↄ,], which participates in SVLR in some dialects but not in others.

Variation in the Standard Scottish English of Morningside

Variation in the Standard Scottish English of Morningside