Re: schoen


"Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...

> On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 10:25:13 GMT, John Atkinson
> <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
>
>> "Joachim Pense" <spam-collector@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
>
>>> Am Tue, 06 Dec 2005 21:21:14 +0100 schrieb Ruud Harmsen:
>
>>>> Tue, 06 Dec 2005 19:04:33 GMT: "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>> <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>>>>>You know a variety of English that has a pure [e:]?? Where?
>
>>>> Schotland.
>
>>> Do they have long vowels there?
>
>> Yes. Most words spelled with <-ai-> (pair, braid, hail,
>> bait, ...) have /e:/, contrasting with /e/ in oak, boat,
>> home, go, two, late, day, etc. Similarly there's /o:/
>> (throat, rose, before) contrasting with /o/ (god, on,
>> loch, horse), and /a.e/ (five, fry, aye (yes), fire)
>> contrasting with /@i/ (way, ay (ever), join, bite).
>
>> The above vary somewhat according to dialect (e.g., /e:/and /e/ merge in
>> many central Scots varieties).
>
> For what it's worth, in _Understanding Language Change_
> April McMahon says that Scots and Scottish Standard English
> have no length contrast. Where RP has /i: I/, /e: E/,
> /A: æ/, /u: o/, /O: A./, and /oU V/, for Scots/SSE she gives
> /i I/, /e E/, /a a/, /u u/, /O O/, and /o V/.

There seems to be a lot of variation according to region and register. The
above long/short contrasts seem to be particularly associated with Angus
vernacular, according to Aitken. Wells simply says "Some speakers [...]
have instances of [...] length contrasts in other environments [than those
given by Aitken's Law], e.g. leek [lik] vs leak [li:k], vane [ven] vs vain
[ve:n], creek [krik] vs creak [kri:k], choke vs joke, made vs maid, badge
vs cadge". He doesn't attempt to locate these speakers in any particular
region.

I suspect all these authors (though Aitken less than the others -- perhaps)
are oversimplifying the real-world situation in an attempt to get their
description to fit into a couple of pages.

> The Concise
> Scots Dictionary offers [bred] and [brEd] for <braid> (also
> Aberdeen Coast [br@id]).

Aitken seems to restrict /E/ to words that have /E/ in RP (met, bed,
leather), or are spelled with <er> (serve, Perth)

>> Then there's Aitken's law, which affects most Scots vowels, making them
>> long
>> before "a following voiced fricative, /r/, or a morpheme boundary, all
>> these
>> being either final or followed by a consonant constituting a second
>> morpheme".
>
> The exceptions, according to McMahon, are /I V E/.

Aitken excepts only /I/ and /V/ (not /E/).

John.


.

Relevant Pages

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    ... For what it's worth, in _Understanding Language Change_ ... April McMahon says that Scots and Scottish Standard English ... > Then there's Aitken's law, which affects most Scots vowels, making them long ...
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