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Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster 12-14 August 2015

Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster 12-14 August 2015. Introducing FITS Rhona Alcorn Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics University of Edinburgh

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Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster 12-14 August 2015

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  1. Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster12-14 August 2015 Introducing FITS Rhona Alcorn Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics University of Edinburgh with Vasilis Karaiskos, Joanna Kopaczyk, Bettelou Los, Warren Maguire, Benjamin Molineaux & Daisy Smith

  2. From Inglis to Scots (FITS): Mapping sounds to spellings • £1M AHRC-funded project at AMC • RQ: How did the highly distinctive form of speech that evolved in Scotland in the Middle Ages develop? • 5 researchers, 1 programmer, 1 PhD student + advisory panel of experts • Apr 2014 – Mar 2018

  3. From Inglis to Scots: Mapping sounds to spellings Inglis & Early Scots pre-date the era of recorded sound, so we rely on their written language for evidence No national standard of spelling until very much later so ESc spellings are highly variable See further: Aitken 1971, Macafee & Aitken 2002, McClure 1995, Jones 1997

  4. ‘earl’in 15th-century Scots

  5. ‘both’in 15th-century Scots

  6. ‘law’in 15th-century Scots

  7. Spelling as a window on spoken language Spelling as a window on MidEng Phonology • No national written standard in MidEng • So ME spellings are highly variable too • Clues to features of spoken language, e.g. • [h] dropping: (h)ard ‘hard’,(h)euene ‘heaven’ • fricative loss: ni(h)t ‘night’, ri(ch)te ‘right’ • Nth. stan, ban, ham ~ Sth. ston, bon, hom ‘stone, bone, home’

  8. Spelling as a window on ESc phonology • Some progress, e.g. Johnston (1997), Aitken (2002) • But the focus has tended towards: • major developments, i.e. those with reflexes in ModSc • distinctive developments, i.e. those that distinguish Scots from English

  9. FITS: methodology • Like Aitken (2002) we will trace the history of individual speech sounds rather than individual words • Unlike Aitken we focus on: • the period to 1500 • the language of documents • words of Germanic origin • all types of speech sounds • rare as well as common spelling variants • regional as well as temporal developments

  10. ESc spellings: our data source • A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots corpus: • 1,400+ diplomatically-transcribed, local texts • All dated before 1500 • when Scots was flourishing as a national language • before anglicisation effects took off • All dated after 1380 • no older texts of this type survive

  11. FITS: methodology 1380-1500 spellings sound-spelling mappings 1380-1500 sound systems

  12. Spelling complexities: Mod St. English • A letter may have > 1 sound • <c>: electric [k], electricity [s] • <ea>: beard [i], break [e], heard [ɛ], heart [a] • A sound may have > 1 representations • [ʤ]: jump, germ, ledger • [i]: feet, beat, grieve, deceive • Our analysis will capture phonotactic data

  13. FITS: methodology 1380-1500 spellings sound-spelling mappings 1380-1500 sound systems diachronic correspondences (= the CC) Sources of the 1380-1500 sound systems

  14. Progress so far • Designed and built • Primary data extractor tool • Data analysis tool • FITS database • CC database • FITS website (amc.lel.ed.ac.uk/fits/) • Lots of level 1 analyses (Esc Spellings :: ESc Sounds) • First set of data ready for level 2 (diachronic) analysis

  15. Expected outputs • A freely-available, fully-searchable, online database to answer user-defined Qs like: • what does Inglis <ui> represent? • when and where did [v]-deletion begin? • which aspects of Scots are not of OE origin? • Digital maps to display answers temporo-spatially • Workshops to introduce FITS tools • A transferrable methodology

  16. References Aitken, A.J. 1971. Variation and variety in Middle Scots. In A.J. Aitken et al. (eds.) Edinburgh Studies in English and Scots, 177-209. London: Longman. Aitken, A.J. 2002. The Older Scottish Vowels. Ed. C. Macafee. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society. CoNE: Lass, R., M. Laing, R. Alcorn & K. Williamson (eds.). 2013. A Corpus of Narrative Etymologies from Primitive OE to Early ME. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/CoNE/CoNE.html Johnston, P. 1997. Older Scots phonology. In Jones (ed.). Jones, C. (ed.) 1997. The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: EUP. LAOS: A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots 1380-1500, ed. K. Williamson. 2008. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos1.html Macafee, C. & A.J. Aitken. 2002. A History of Scots to 1700. www.dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/history-of-scots/ McClure, J.D. 1995. Scots and its Literature. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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