Northern and insular Scots / Robert McColl Millar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Millar, Robert McColl, 1966-

Series:

Dialects of English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Dialects--Scotland, Northern.

English language.

English language--Dialects.

Physical Description:

vii, 178 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2007]

Summary:

The Scots dialects of northern Scotland, Orkney and Shetland are among the most traditional varieties of 'English', exhibiting features not current elsewhere for centuries. Until recently, they were spoken in communities whose traditional occupations have encouraged the equation of speech with local identity. They have all also been affected by contact with Gaelic, or Norse, or both. In recent years, however, the decline of traditional industries has been matched by the discovery of oil off their coasts, encouraging inmigration of speakers of many varieties of English and other languages. How well have these varieties maintained their traditional natures at the start of the twenty-first century?

Northern and Insular Scots provides: an approachable description of the phonological, structural and lexical natures of these varieties, a history of the varieties in relation to the areas in which they are spoken, examples of the language of native speakers, an annotated bibliography which points the reader towards more specialised works.

Contents:

1.1 Northern and Insular Scots 1

1.2 The linguistic ecologies of the regions 5

1.3 Geography and culture: an introduction 6

1.4 A note on terminology: 'Scots' versus 'English' 14

2 Phonetics and phonology 16

2.2 The vowel systems 20

2.3 Consonant phonology 61

2.4 Prosody 64

3 Morphosyntax 65

3.2 The nouns 66

3.3 Pronouns 67

3.4 The definite article 71

3.5 Adjectives 72

3.6 Verbs 72

4 Lexis 79

4.2 Scholarly resources: national 79

4.3 Locally focused resources 83

4.4 Dialect vocabulary and heritage 92

4.6 Lexical borrowing 95

5 History, including changes in progress 103

5.1 Introduction: language contact and language shift 103

5.2 Northern Scotland 106

5.3 The Northern Isles 123

6 Survey of previous works and annotated bibliography 136

6.1 General histories, grammars, studies of phonology and dictionaries of Scots 136

6.2 Local history and geography 137

6.3 Studies of specific dialects 138

6.4 Theoretical views discussed in this book 139

6.5 Suggestions for future research 140

6.6 Works cited in this chapter and the book as a whole 142

7 Texts 149

7.1 Shetland 149

7.2 Orkney 162

7.3 Caithness 163

7.4 Black Isle 166

7.5 Mid-Northern B 167

7.6 Mid-Northern A 168

7.7 South Northern 171.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 142-148) and index.

ISBN:

0748623167

9780748623167

0748623175

9780748623174

OCLC:

73955469