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Strict Cyclicity, Structure Preservation and the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Philip Carr
Philip Carr
Affiliation:
School of English, University of Newcastle Upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne NEl 7RU, UK
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Extract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 91 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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