Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T18:39:50.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The origins of owld in Scots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2020

WARREN MAGUIRE Open the ORCID record for WARREN MAGUIRE [Opens in a new window]
WARREN MAGUIRE*
Affiliation:
Linguistics and English Language (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences), University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, EdinburghEH8 9AD, United [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The usual development of OE [ɑld] in words such as old in Scots is to auld, reflecting the development of this sequence in northern dialects more generally. But in some Scots dialects other pronunciations of these words, reminiscent of dialects of English south of the Ribble–Humber Line, are found. These forms, of the type owld, are found across Lowland Scotland, with particular concentrations in the far north and southwest. Origins in Irish English and English in England have been suggested for this feature of Scots but these hypotheses have not been explored. Aitken & Macafee (2002: 61–2) instead argue for an endogenous origin of both auld and owld, but this proposed double endogenous development of OE [ɑld] is problematic in a number of ways. In this article, I examine the history of these developments in Scots in comparison to their development in dialects of English in England and Ireland. The lack of evidence for the owld development in Older Scots suggests that these forms are of relatively recent origin. Crucially, the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) reveals that the owld pronunciations were in fact a feature of early forms of Standard English. Furthermore, several characteristic features of Irish English have spread into southwest Scotland, and the distribution of owld forms in the area fits this pattern. Thus Scots forms such as owld are not the result of endogenous development, but have their origin in English, in the case of southwest Scotland at least in part from Irish English, and elsewhere in Scotland from early forms of Standard English. These owld forms have been ‘localised’ and reinterpreted as ‘Scots’, alongside or replacing original auld. The analysis of the origins of this feature highlights not only the role of contact with varieties of English in the development of Scots, but also the importance of sources such as the ECEP database for understanding the historical phonology of Scots and English.

Keywords

Early Modern EnglishlocalisationphonologyScottish Standard EnglishScots
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 24 , Special Issue 3: Studies in Late Modern English historical phonology using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) , September 2020 , pp. 569 - 589
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aitken, A. J. 1984a. Scottish accents and dialects. In Trudgill, (ed.), 94–118.Google Scholar
Aitken, A. J. 1984b. Scots and English in Scotland. In Trudgill, (ed.), 517–32.Google Scholar
Aitken, A. J. & Macafee, Caroline. 2002. The Older Scots vowels. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society.Google Scholar
Alcorn, Rhona, Karaiskos, Vasilis, Kopaczyk, Joanna, Los, Bettelou, Maguire, Warren & Molineaux, Benjamin. Forthcoming. From Inglis to Scots: A Corpus of Grapho-phonological Correspondences (1380–1500) with Associated Corpus of Changes. The University of Edinburgh. www.amc.lel.ed.ac.uk/fits/Google Scholar
Anderson, Peter. 1987. A structural atlas of the English dialects. North Ryde, New South Wales: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Beal, Joan C., Sen, Ranjan, Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria & Wallis, Christine. 2020. Special issue on studies in Late Modern English historical phonology using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP): Introduction. English Language and Linguistics 24(3), 471–4.Google Scholar
DOST = Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue.1921–2002. Online version at https://dsl.ac.uk/Google Scholar
Dieth, Eugen. 1932. A grammar of the Buchan dialect. Cambridge: Heffer.Google Scholar
Dobson, E. J. 1957. English pronunciation 1500–1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
ECEP = Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database. 2015. Compiled by Joan C. Beal, Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Ranjan Sen & Christine Wallis (The University of Sheffield and Universidade de Vigo). Published by the Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield. www.dhi.ac.uk/projects/ecep/Google Scholar
Ellis, Alexander. 1869. On early English pronunciation, part 1. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Gregg, Robert. 1985. The Scotch-Irish dialect boundaries in the province of Ulster. Ottawa: Canadian Federation for the Humanities.Google Scholar
Harris, John. 1985. Phonological variation and change: Studies in Hiberno-English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hedevind, Bertil. 1967. The dialect of Dentdale in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. 1997a. Older Scots phonology and its regional variation. In Jones, (ed.), 47–111.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. 1997b. Regional variation. In Jones, (ed.), 433–513.Google Scholar
Jones, Charles (ed.). 1997. The Edinburgh history of the Scots language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Joyce, P. W. 1910. English as we speak it in Ireland. London: Longmans, Green & Co.Google Scholar
Kökeritz, Helge. 1953. Shakespeare's pronunciation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1990. Early mainland residues in southern Hiberno-English. Irish University Review 20(1), 137–48.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1992. Phonology and morphology. In Blake, Norman (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 2: 1066–1476, 23–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lass, Roger. 2000. Phonology and morphology. In Lass, Roger (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 3: 1476–1776, 56–186. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luick, Karl. 1940. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Leipzig: Tauchnitz.Google Scholar
Macafee, Caroline. 1994. Traditional dialect in the modern world: A Glasgow case study. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Macafee, Caroline. 2001. Lowland sources of Ulster Scots: Some comparisons between Robert Gregg's data and The linguistic atlas of Scotland (vol. 3). In Kirk, John & Dónall, Ó Baoill (eds.), Language links: The languages of Scotland and Ulster, 119–32. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona.Google Scholar
Maguire, Warren. 2012. English and Scots in Scotland. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), Areal features of the Anglophone world, 53–77. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Maguire, Warren. Forthcoming a. LAS3 revisited. To appear in Kopaczyk, Joanna (ed.), Papers from the Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster Triennial Meeting, Glasgow 2018. Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ireland.Google Scholar
Maguire, Warren. Forthcoming b. The phonological origins of Mid-Ulster English: Language and dialect contact in Ireland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Maguire, Warren, Alcorn, Rhona, Molineaux, Benjamin, Kopaczyk, Joanna, Karaiskos, Vasilios & Los, Bettelou. 2019. Charting the rise and demise of a phonotactically motivated change in Scots. In Ritt, Nikolaus (ed.), Diachronic phonotactics, special issue of Folia Linguistica (Historica) 40(1), 37–59.Google Scholar
Mather, James & Speitel, Hans-Henning. 1986. The linguistic atlas of Scotland, Scots section, vol. 3: Phonology. Beckenham: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam & Niedzielski, Nancy. 2003. The globalisation of vernacular variation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4), 534–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2014. A historical phonology of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Molineaux Ress, Benjamin, Kopaczyk, Joanna, Maguire, Warren, Alcorn, Rhona, Karaiskos, Vasilis & Los, Bettelous. 2019. Early spelling evidence for Scots L-vocalisation. In Alcorn, Rhona, Los, Bettelou, Kopaczyk, Joanna & Benjamin, Molineaux Ress (eds.), Historical dialectology in the digital age, 61–87. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Morton, Alan. 1993–2005. DMAP: Distribution mapping software [computer program], version 7.2e. www.dmap.co.ukGoogle Scholar
Orton, Harold. 1929. Northumberland dialect research: First report. Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society 8, 127–35.Google Scholar
Orton, Harold. 1933. The phonology of a south Durham dialect: Descriptive, historical and comparative. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.Google Scholar
Orton, Harold & Dieth, Eugen (eds.). 1962–71. Survey of English dialects (B): The basic material. Leeds: Arnold & Son.Google Scholar
Orton, Harold, Sanderson, Stewart & Widdowson, John (eds.). 1978. The linguistic atlas of England. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ringe, Don & Taylor, Ann. 2014. The development of Old English (A linguistic history of English, vol. 2). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stenbrenden, Gjertrude. 2016. Long-vowel shifts in English, c.1050–1700: Evidence from spelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter (ed.). 1984. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wakelin, Martyn. 1972. English dialects: An introduction. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Wells, J. C. 1982. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wyld, H. C. 1927. A short history of English, 3rd edn. London: John Murray.Google Scholar