INTRODUCTION audience — e.g. Charles Murray in Wha draws a Blade is addressing all Scotsmen, and on a dignified subject — therefore he uses the conventional literary dialect. In Fae France he puts the “braidest Buchan” into the mouth of the poacher who becomes a soldier. Sir Walter Scott makes a subtle distinction between the Scots of the town weaver Bailie Nicol Jarvie and that of Rob Roy, his Highland kinsman. Jeanie Deans suits her dialect to her listener, and the Scots of Jonathan Oldbuck is not exactly the same as the speech of Edie Ochiltree and the Mucklebackits. § 23. Dialect writers brought to the rest of Scotland some knowledge of the less familiar parts of the country and presented to their compatriots the feelings and thoughts of their inhabitants. They preserved many “couthy” Sc. words, idioms and proverbial sayings t embodying old customs and habits of thought. They helped to keep the conventional literary speech in touch with the real living language of the common folk. Kinds of Phonetic Change § 24. Before describing the phonetic features that distinguish Mod Sc. from Mod.St.Eng., and differentiate the Sc. dialects from one another, a summary account is here given of some of the more important phonetic changes to which all spoken language is subjoct. Phonetic changes to which all language is subject are of two Kinds, Organic and Inorganic. The first is dependent on the condition and movement of the vocal organs, and the second is due to acoustic causes (such as faulty imitation) and to the play of reason upon the brute matter of speech, especially through the mental process called analogy. Organic Change. § 25. There are two kinds of organic change. The first, called Isolative, occurs where ther e is a gradual development from one generation to another, extending sometimes over centuries, and often unnoticed by the speakers of the language or dialect. An Isolative change in any given dialect carries with it the great body of words which have in their initial stage the same accented vowel sound. For instance, in Primitive Old English — i.e. the form of English from which all English dialects, provincial or literary, are derived — the word bān (bone) had the sound of ā as in our Mod.Eng. father. In the North of England and in Scotland at an early period the sound, while still retaining its length, began to approach that of a [a] as in Mod.Eng. (northern standard) pat; then it became [æ] as in Mod.Sth.Eng. pat [pæt], then e [ε] as in Mod.Eng. pet, then [e] as in Mod.Eng. pate. Thus we have our Mod.Sc. bane, stane, with variations in the Scottish dialects. In the Middle and South of England, on the other hand, this Primitive Old English ā sound became deeper and fuller, and at length, by the action of rounding in the lips and in the back-opening of the mouth, developed into a broad o sound [&openo;], so that even before the time of Chaucer bān was pronounced as [b&openo;:n]. The difference between this sound and King Alfred's bān was so marked that Chaucer wrote it always with an o symbol, but in The Reeve's Tale he represented it, in the mouth of the northern students, by the letter a. Examples; na, ham, swa, gas, fra, for no, home, so, goes, from. The other O.E. long vowels, e, i, y, o, underwent similar isolative changes, the process of which we can often imagine or trace, although the cause remains obscure. § 26. The second kind of organic change is known as Combinative, because it is due to the influence of adjacent sounds on each other when combined into words, phrases and sentences. § 27. The most common kind of Combinative change is called Assimilation, where one sound is made to approach another (1) by becoming breathed or voiced, or (2) by an alteration in (a) manner of formation, or (b) place of formation in the vocal organs. Assimilation may work forwards (progressive) or backwards (regressive). § 27.1. Progressive assimilation. — In wadge for wedge, wab for web, the w has turned the front vowel e into a back vowel. In the pronunciation of w the back of the tongue rises and this back position is kept right through the vowel, with the result of a. In some dialects web is pronounced wob. The rounding of the lips necessary for the formation of w is carried forward into the a and produces the rounded vowel o. In the words bacon, taiken (token), when the second vowel is omitted, final n is changed into [ŋ], thus [′bekŋ]. § 27.2. Regressive assimilation. — E.g. knowe becomes tnowe. n is a point nasal sound and k back plosive. n attracts the k to its own position and makes it the point plosive — i.e. tnow — as in Ags. and e.Per. dialect. So length, strength become Sc. lenth, strenth.