6 Phonology
This section up to §6.30 is a
summary, revised for the purposes of this Introduction, of Aitken (2002) on the
vowel phonology of OSc, to which the reader is referred for rhyme and spelling
evidence and for a more detailed exposition with many more examples. At a few
points, comments by myself as editor that appear in the notes in the original
are incorporated. As yet, no-one
has attempted a similarly full treatment of the consonants, but I have added a
few remarks in §6.31 - CM.
6.1 Vowel systems and sources
As the starting point for the
history of the Scots stressed vowels we take late OE: see Figure 7.
Figure 8 shows the values assumed
for ESc. The main sources of the ESc vowels
are listed below (for a fuller treatment, see Aitken, 2002). Vowel 1, ESc /i:/ • OE, ON ī, ȳ: e.g. bite, myre; • OE i before /ld/: e.g. wild (see §6.3.1); • OE y (rarely i) before /nd/: e.g. kind (see §6.3.1); • OE ī • OE suffix –ī • after liquids, OE and ON • OF i in e.g. devide, cry, despite; • suffix -ie of OF origin: e.g. folie; • suffix -i, -y of OF origin: e.g. mercy. Vowel 2, ESc /e:/ • OE ē (WGmc ē): e.g. here adv.; ON é: e.g. sere ‘various’; • OE (Angl) ē (= WS ǣ1): e.g. schepe, wete,
‘wet’, dede ‘deed’, drede, mede ‘meadow’, rede v. ‘read’, threde, hele ‘heel’, ȝere ‘year’, hering ‘herring’, evin ‘evening’; • OE ē, ON , by i-mutation of earlier ō : e.g. kepe; • OE (Angl) ē (= WS īe), by i-mutation of Gmc au (OE ēa): e.g. eke v., nede ‘need’, here v. ‘hear’; • OE ēo, ON jú: e.g. lefe ‘dear’, ferde ‘fourth’, chese ‘choose’ (varying with chuse, from the rising diphthong),
similarly ȝede varying with ȝude ‘went’; • OE ēa by ‘Anglian smoothing’: e.g. bekin ‘beacon’; • OE ē by lengthening of ĕ (ĕo): e.g. felde (see §6.3.1); • AN ē: e.g. clere ‘clear’, maintene, chere ‘cheer’, dangere; • AN ö: e.g. pepill, befe ‘beef’, quere ‘choir’, prefe ‘proof’, preve v. ‘prove’ (also prufe, pruve with Vowel 7), and similarly meve
v. ‘move’; • L ē (from the L p.t.s exēmit, etc.) in exeme ‘exempt’, expreme ‘express’, redeme ‘redeem’; • PreSc ĭ with OSL: e.g. geve, ‘give’ (from Scand giva, alongside variant with Vowel 3,
from OE, ON ĕ), cete
‘city’, menister (see §6.6); • OE i with ‘belated’ HOCL: e.g. chelde ‘child’ (see §6.3.1); • OF -é (L -ātem): e.g. bewte; • OE ée (L -āta) (with doublets in Vowel 8): e.g. allye; • OE ǣ2 (i-mutation of earlier ā, Gmc ai) variably has Vowel 2 before the voiced
alveolars /d, n, l, r/: e.g. brede
‘breath’, sprede,
clene, mene v.
‘intend’, mene v.
‘complain’, dele n.
‘deal, share’ (whereas dele v. has Vowel 3), lere ‘learn’, lede v. ‘lead’, hete n. ‘heat’, swete v. ‘sweat’, and the suffix -hede. It
is conceivable that these inconsistencies (and likewise Vowel 3, below, from ǣ1) stem from dialect
mixing in the AN period (see §2.3.3); • OE ēa also yields Vowel 2 variants: e.g. bene ‘bean’, lepe v. ‘leap’, eith ‘easily’. Vowel 3, ESc /ε:/ Vowel 3 does not occur word-finally.
• PreSc ĕ with OSL: e.g. (from OE) ete ‘eat’, geve ‘give’, hevin ‘heaven’; (from ON) neve ‘fist’; (from OF) were ‘war’ (see §6.6); • OF ĕ before the palatal consonants, in e.g. fenȝe ‘feign’ (see §6.11); • OE ēa: e.g. OSc bete ‘beat’; • OE ǣ2: e.g. quhete ‘wheat’, blese ‘blaze’; also ON ǽ in sete ‘seat’; • OE ǣ1: e.g. rede n. ‘counsel’, fere ‘fear’, brethe ‘breath’; • OF ē in ‘learned words’: e.g. repete ‘repeat’, remede ‘remedy’, concele, increse, creat; • Vowel 4, ESc /a:/ • OE, ON ā, in e.g. hate ‘hot’, stane ‘stone’; • OE, ON ă with HOCL; e.g. aynd ‘breath’, wame ‘belly’ (see §6.3.1); • PreSc /a/ with OSL: e.g. (from OE,
ON, MDu, Gaelic) make, gate ‘road’,
craig ‘neck’, craig ‘crag’; (from OF, L) able, -able suffix; (with shifted stress) mater ‘matter’; also before palatal consonants, in
e.g. falȝe ‘fail’ (see §§6.6, 6.11); • The suffix -ale, from L -ālis, as in bestiale, etc., sometimes rhymes as Vowel 4,
as well as, more frequently, as Vowel 17, -all. Vowel 5, ESc / • PreSc / • OF o, before single final consonant and /st/: e.g. close n. and adj., los ‘praise’, bost ‘boast’, host ‘army’, store; • PreSc / Vowel 6, ESc /u:/ • OE, ON ū: e.g. clout, cow; • OE, ON ūf-: dow ‘dove’, schow ‘shove’; • OE, ON ūg-, ŭg-: e.g. bow ‘to bend’, drouth ‘drought’; • OE ŭ with
HOCL before /nd/ (with doublets in Vowel 19): e.g. ground (see §6.3.1); • OF, AN u: e.g. croun; and, with retained stress, the
final syllables of e.g. baroun, cullour ‘colour’, jelous; • OF in dour (L dūrus); • MDu ū in spout, MDu, MLG ū in stouk, MLG ō in stoup ‘drinking vessel’; • OE ŭ after w > ū in (w)ouk ‘week’,
(w)oull
‘wool’ (also (w)ou by l-vocalisation, see §6.23), s(w)ourd, woud ‘wood’ (beside wuid, etc.); OE wi- > /wu-/ > /(w)u:/ in s(w)oum ‘swim’; • OE ŏg- after /w/ > ū in swoun ‘swoon’; • by-forms (wouk, woush, etc.) of PreSc /y:/ Vowel 7
following a labial consonant: e.g. wuisch p.t. of wesch v. ‘wash’, fusioun ‘foison, plenty’, muild; • ON ó > /u:/ in Orkney and Shetland (via Norn) in
outhall ‘udal’. Vowel 7, ESc /y:/ • OE ō: e.g. gude ‘good’, do v.; • ON ó: e.g. lufe ‘palm of the hand’; • MDu, MLG ō: e.g. cuit ‘ankle’; • OE eō, treated as a rising diphthong: e.g. chuse v. , schute v.; • OE eōw: truith ‘truth’ (beside treuth Vowel 14a and trowth Vowel 13); • OE ŏ before /rd/, e.g. burde ‘board’ (see §6.3.1); • OF ō following a labial: e.g. bute ‘boot’, bro ‘broth’, fule ‘fool’, mulde ‘mould’, pure ‘poor’; • PreSc / • OF • OF üi: e.g. bruit, fruit, June. Vowel 8, ESc /ai/ • OE, ON word-final and pre-consonantal ē • ON ei, ey: e.g. ay ‘always’, graith ‘equip(ment)’, fey ‘doomed’; and the pronouns thay, thaim, thair (see §6.9.1); • AN ai: e.g. gay, obey; • in the suffix -ay, -a, from AN -eie, OF -ée, L -āta (with doublets in Vowel 2): e.g. allya ‘ally’, cuntray; ischa ‘egress’, journay; • also OF -eie, e.g. monay; and OF -ai, e.g. verray ‘true’. Vowel 9, ESc / • OF or AN oi: e.g. joy, nois; also, with doublets in Vowel 5, croice n. ‘cross’, jois v. ‘enjoy’; and with variants also
in Vowel 10, vois
‘voice’, void; • in boy, of uncertain origin. Vowel 10, ESc /ui/ • AN ui: e.g. point, foisoun (beside fusioun Vowel 7), poison (beside pusoun Vowel 7); • from MDu: doit ‘the small Dutch coin’, hoy ‘the type of boat’. Vowel 11, ESc /e:i/ > /e:/
Vowel 2 • The only source is ē Vowel 12, ESc /au/ • OE, ON āw(-) and pre-vocalic ăw-, āg-, ăg-: e.g. OSc knaw ‘know’, awin ‘own’, law (see §6.9.4.1); • OE (Angl) ald /ald/, lengthened to OE āld /a:ld/, with 14th century
breaking to /auld/ (see §6.13); • early PreSc a before h /x/: e.g. lauch ‘laugh’ (see §6.9.2.2); • OF au: e.g. baum ‘balm’; • AN [ɑ:] before nasal combinations: e.g. graund
‘grand’, chaumer ‘chamber’, daunger ‘danger’ (see §6.12); Vowel 13, ESc / • OE ōw(-): e.g. grow (see §6.9.4.2); • OE, ON pre-vocalic ŏg-: e.g. bow n. ‘the weapon’ (see §6.9.4.2); • OWScand au: e.g. gowk ‘cuckoo’; • OF ou / • OE (Angl) ăld /ald/, lengthened to OE āld /a:ld/, with 14th century
breaking to / • early PreSc /o/ before h /x/, e.g. douchter beside dochter ‘daughter’ (see §6.9.2.2); • OE o + f [v], vocalised in PreSc: in owre ‘over’. Vowel 14a, PreSc /i:u/ and /e:u/
> ESc /i:u/ The sources of /e:u/ are: • OE ēow: e.g. brēowan ‘to brew’ > brew; • probably also OE ĭw-, in sĭwan ‘to sew’, with PreSc /iw-/ >
/e:w-/ by OSL; • OF eu: e.g. OF bleu ‘blue’, AN jeuel, etc. • OE īw- in OE spīwan ‘to spew’ and, with puzzling re-analysis and
thus re-syllabification of the
compound, OE sti • OF iu < earlier OF eu: e.g. griu ‘Greek’ > Grew. Additional sources augmenting the
merged Vowel 14a are: • OE /o:ɣV(C)/: e.g. enew; • in Northern, /o:r(d)/: e.g. mure,
buird; • OE ō before /k, x/; e.g. heuk, eneuch; • OF - Vowel 14b, early PreSc [ε:u] >
ESc /ε:u/ and /ε • OE ēaw(-), ǣw(-), > early ME and early PreSc /ε:w-/ and
/ε:u/, e.g. dew,
schew (beside schaw from sc(e)āwian, with shifted diphthongal stress), sleuth ‘sloth’; • OF eau: e.g. bewté. Vowel 15, ESc /ɪ/ • OE, ON ĭ, ў: e.g. bid, big v. ‘build’; • late OE ĭ, variant of ĕ before -ht: e.g. ficht, hicht ‘promise’; • OE ĭ, ў + nd: e.g. bind, pind v. ‘impound’ (see §6.3.1); • OE, ON ī, ȳ shortened: e.g. hiddillis ‘hiding’ (see §6.3); • OF ĭ: e.g. riche. Vowel 16, ESc /ε/ • OE, ON ĕ, ĕo: e.g. fecht ‘fight’, cleg ‘horse-fly’; • OF e: e.g. det ‘debt’; • OE æ̆,ĕa before alveolars and dentals: e.g. esch
‘ash tree’, blether
‘bladder, talk
foolishly’, bress ‘brass’,
creddil ‘cradle’,
erse ‘arse’, festin ‘fasten’, gef p.t. ‘gave’, gether ‘gather’, gled adj. ‘glad’, gles ‘glass’, gres ‘grass’, helter ‘halter’, ledder ‘ladder’, mes ‘mass, the religious service’, peth
‘path’, Setterday,
wesch ‘wash’. Vowel 17, ESc /a/ • OE (Angl) æ̆, ă, ON ă: e.g. sad, lang; • OF and AN a: e.g. cattle; • in the early PreSc combination elgV(C) > /εl(o)wV(C)/: fallow ‘fellow’, ȝallow ‘yellow’, swallow v. Vowel 18, ESc /ǫ/ • OE, ON ŏ: e.g. hollin ‘holly’, toft; • OE, ON ō shortened: e.g. thocht, oxter ‘armpit’ (see §6.3); • OF o: joly. Vowel 19, ESc / • OE, ON ŭ: e.g. burch ‘burgh’, bus ‘bush’; • OE ŭ before /nd/ and /ŋg/ (with doublets in Vowel
6): e.g. grund ‘ground’
(see §6.3.1); • OF tonic u in closed syllables (varying with
Vowel 6 outcomes): e.g. nummer ‘number’; • OF countertonic u: e.g. bucket, buttoun, cullour ‘colour’, supper. 6.2
Preliterary
Scots: General The phonological development of
Scots in the PreSc period largely shadowed that of ME generally. So PreSc shared in such developments as
the smoothing of OE diphthongs and the subsequent creation of new diphthongs by
native processes, supplemented by borrowings from ON, OF and other external
sources. Likewise it shared in
general in the succession of lengthenings and shortenings of vowels which so
strikingly modified the lexical distributions of vowel sounds between OE and
ME/ESc.[102] Here we will concentrate on those
changes in which PreSc (mostly together with nME) followed a different path
from sME or, more often, differed in detail in the outcomes of shared
trends. In either case the effect
was a wide difference between the Northern and the Midland-Southern dialects in
the lexical distributions of (mostly shared) vowel phonemes. Older Scots was highly tolerant of
doublets and variants, as we have seen. Many of the sound-changes discussed
below resulted not in the replacement of an old form, but in the creation of an
additional option. In the modern
dialects some of the individual members of these variant sets are separately
distributed between dialects. In
many cases their dialect distribution in OSc is much less evident, in the
present state of knowledge. 6.3
Vowel
shortenings and lengthenings of the OE period Below we list the succession of
vowel shortenings and lengthenings in OE: • Pre-Cluster Shortening I (6th – 7th century):
e.g. OE grēttra > grĕttre > OSc gretter /'grεtɪr/; • Trisyllabic Shortening I (6th – 7th century):
e.g. OE hlāfmæsse > hlăfmesse > OSc lammes ‘Lammas’; • Homorganic Cluster Lengthening (9th century): for
examples, see below; • Pre-Cluster Shortening II (11th century): e.g. OE fīfta > fĭfte > OSc fift; • Trisyllabic Shortening II (11th century): e.g. OE sūðerne > sŭðerne > OSc suthern. 6.3.1 Homorganic Cluster
Lengthening We shall look more closely at
Homorganic Cluster Lengthening (HOCL), as there are differences between nME and
sME with regard to these changes.
Homorganic clusters are sequences of a sonorant consonant followed by a
plosive articulated at the same point with the same tongue configuration. Before /ld/ • PreSc shared the general lengthening
of OE ĭ and ĕ, e.g. OE wĭlde > wīlde > wild; OE fĕld > fēld > felde. • Unlike sME, PreSc has some
lengthening of ŏ
in this environment, e.g. OE mŏlde ‘soil’ > mōlde >
muild,
Vowel 7, along with an unlengthened doublet mold, Vowel 18; but not e.g. fold n.1. • On the lengthening of Anglian a + ld and its development to auld and owld, see §6.13. • The sequence -uld is largely lacking in OE; but sculde ‘should’ fails to lengthen, giving suld. Before /nd/ • For the most part PreSc does not
show lengthening of ĭ before /nd/, so Vowel 15 in blind, etc.; but lengthening, yielding Vowel 1, in
e.g. kind. • As in sME, ĕ does not usually show lengthening
before /nd/, e.g. bend; but lengthening did occur for instance in OE gehĕnde ‘handy’ > heynde, OE lĕndan ‘to land’ > leynd ‘to dwell’ (alongside unlengthened lend). • PreSc does not usually show
lengthening of OE ă before /nd/, thus band, etc.; but lengthening did occur in ON ănde ‘breath’ > aynd; OE făndian ‘to test’ > faynde; OE sănd ‘messenger’ > saynde. • OE ŭ lengthened to /u:/ before /nd/, yielding Vowel
6, in stound ‘a
while’, sound
adj., sound n.
‘swim bladder’, and wound n.; but with unlengthened doublets in Vowel 19, in e.g. bound and bund, bundin, p.p.; found and fund, fundin, p.p.; ground n. and grund; houndreth
and hundreth..
The DOST record appears to indicate that for most items the unlengthened forms
were more frequent in OSc. Before /mb/ • ĭ before /mb/ shows no lengthening: cf. e.g. ModSc clim ‘climb’. • ŭ before /mb/ shows no lengthening: e.g. clumbin p.p. of clim ‘climb’. • As in sME, OE ă before /mb/ > /a:/ Vowel 4: e.g. kame ‘comb’; but not e.g. clam p.t. of clim ‘climb’. Before ng /ŋg/ As in sME, there is not usually
lengthening in PreSc in this environment: e.g. bring, sang, hung. But note MSc laing with Vowel 4, a less common and later variant
of lang; and OSc doungin, doung with Vowel 6, a well-attested
though less common variant of dungin, dung, p.p. of ding ‘to beat’, and heing (late 16th century)
beside regular hing v. ‘to hang’ < ON hengja. [103]
Before /rd/ • OE æ (ea) in OE beard yielded Vowel 3, thus beird ‘beard’. • OE e in e.g. breird ‘first shoots’ and eird ‘earth’ yielded Vowel 2 /e:/,
according to the rhyme evidence. • OE ŏ lengthened to /o:/ before /rd/, ultimately
yielding Vowel 7 in e.g. OE bŏrd ‘board’ > bōrd > buird ‘board’. The lengthened vowel in e.g. yaird < OE Other clusters The homorganic clusters /rn/ and
/rl/ perhaps did not cause lengthening in PreSc (any more than in
English). In most cases with
lengthened vowels in these environments there are other explanations. Cairn, like baird ‘bard’ and caird ‘tinker’, had /a:/ by derivation
from Gaelic /a:/ (Pődör, 1995/6: 183); on bairn ‘child’, and eirl beside erl ‘earl’, see §6.6.1. 6.4
Backing
and rounding of OE, ON ā in sME Vowel 4, OE and ON ā /ɑ:/ in e.g. hām ‘home’, remained common to all
dialects of early ME till about 11th – 12th century. By that date, however, in sME it had
probably become rounded to something like [ɑ̫:]. In the 13th century there
accrued to both these dialects a body of vocabulary containing the sound [a:],
from OF ā, in e.g.
cās /ka:s/ and
by OSL of OE and OF ă in e.g. nāme, /na:mə/ (see §6.6.1). These
joined Vowel 4 in the north, now evidently fronted from its late OE
realisation. Meantime in sME the
[ɑ̫:] diaphone had undergone raising to something like [ Around this time both PreSc and sME
acquired a new low to mid back round phoneme, of rather closer quality than
/ Thus in the outcome both these major
dialects achieved the same or a similar pair of phonemes, /a:/ and / 6.5
Short
Vowel Lowering In the interval between the latest
of the OE vowel shortenings (11th century) and OSL (13th
century), a fundamental readjustment of the short-long vowel oppositions took
place. It is easiest to see this as a general lowering by one height of the old
short vowels, as shown in Figure 9 (Lass, 1992: 48). In this new situation Vowel 15 /ɪ/ lengthens to Vowel 2 /e:/, not
Vowel 1 /i:/ as in OE, Vowel 7 /o:/ shortens to Vowel 19 / 6.6
Open
Syllable Lengthening The 13th century
sound-change known as Open Syllable Lengthening (OSL) lengthened short vowels
in open (i.e. ending in a vowel) stressed syllables when followed by an
unstressed syllable. 6.6.1
The
non-high vowels /e/, /a/, / In PreSc, as in ME, lengthening was
all but invariable in environment (1): environment (1) /-Cə# (as in bere ‘bear, the animal’), but considerably less frequent in
environment (2): environment (2) /-CVC# (as in hadok),
/-Ci Some words that do undergo
lengthening in environment (2) include PreSc /'wε:zəl/ ‘weasel’ (implied by such MSc
forms as quhasill, waizel: see §6.25.2), draigon; waiter
‘water’; seiven
‘seven’; and PreSc /'sε:kund/ is implied by ModSc /'sekənd/ ‘second’. Before clusters /rn/ and /rl/
lengthening may have been due in some cases not to Pre-Cluster Lengthening but
to OSL before an epenthetic vowel forming a second syllable. These epenthetic
vowels are well attested in MSc spellings, e.g. <baren, bairen, beirin,
etc.> for bairn
‘child’ and <eryl, eryll, erell, earill> for eirl, Vowel 3 variant of erl. Some unlengthened forms are
explicable as due to uninflected beside inflected forms, e.g. graff beside grave, coll beside cole ‘coal’ < OE col. More puzzling are many verbs such
as haf and have, mak and make, brek and breke, stell and stele ‘to steal’, and other words in which
unstressed final -e was part of the stem, e.g. den beside dene ‘valley’ < OE denu (cf. StE dean), dell beside dele ‘deal, the wood’ < MDu dele,
clok beside cloke ‘cloak’ < OF cloke, cot beside cote ‘coat’ < OF cote, throt beside throte ‘throat’ < OE rote, rotu, as if in these words final -e had been lost before OSL; but the
textual evidence does not seem to support this. 6.6.2 The high vowels /ɪ/ and / With these vowels, which are believed to
have lengthened later than the non-high vowels, environment (2) seems to be
just as susceptible to lengthening as environment (1). Environment (1): e.g. geve and gif < ON gifa; steke and stik ‘stitch’ < OE stice. Environment (2): e.g. bissy and besy; mekill and mikel ‘mickle’; littill and leitell < OE *lytel, shortened in inflected forms from lȳtel (from which OSc lytil, lyitill, etc., with Vowel 1); and from OF: cité and ceté. It appears that the degemination of
long consonants came too late to admit to OSL conditions such items as bid < OE biddan and clip < ON klippa. But a number of disyllabic words
apparently similarly disqualified from OSL, show occasional spellings in <e,
ei>, e.g. <meidle> middil ‘middle’. OSL is normally a phenomenon of
penultimate stressed syllables. In Scots, however, a substantial body of mots
savants of MF
origin apparently
operated OSL on original OF countertonic i in antepenultimate open syllables with fronted
stress, which yielded PreSc /e:/ Vowel 2, e.g. minister and meinister; and nouns in -itioun, e.g. condition and condecioun. (On the separate treatment of MF tonic i /i:/ in 15th century
Scots, see §6.17.) Vowel 19 / Environment (1): e.g. luif ‘love’ < OE lufu; muve ‘move’< OF muveir. Environment (2): e.g. abuin,
abuve, abuif <
ME abufan; une
‘oven’ < OE ofen; ModSc guitter < AN gutere. In other cases this lengthening
fails, e.g. cum v.,
honey, nut, bullet. For later variants in /ɪ/ Vowel 15 (hinnie, nit, etc.), see §6.18. 6.7 Miscellaneous PreSc forms with unexpected short vowels OSc contained a number of
distinctive present tense verb-forms in short /ε/ Vowel 16, alongside sME forms
with the long vowel /ε:/. Some of these were by ‘failure’ of OSL such as
unlengthened doublets of the verbs brek (beside lengthened breke Vowel 3), spek ‘speak’, get ‘get’. Others were back-formations
from weak p.t.s and p.p.s with geminated consonants, such as sned v. ‘lop branches of a tree’ (PreSc p.t. snǣdde > snĕdde). A similar case is het adj. ‘hot’ (OE gehǣtt, p.p. of hǣtan ‘to heat’).[105] More puzzling are words such as ȝet(t
v. beside ȝete
(OE
6.8 Shortenings of PreSc /e:/ and /o:/ Some of the shortenings of ME and
PreSc /e:/ to /ɪ/ and /o:/ to / • Vowel 15: hicht /hɪxt/ ‘height’ < OE hēhþu; licht < OE lēoht; lipper
< lēper Vowel
2 < OF lēpre
‘leprosy’; the ballad-word
lilly (beside leefly) < OE lēofīc. • Vowel 19: futher, fudder
‘cart-load’ < OE fōðer; futte
< OE fōt, beside
the more widespread Vowel 7 and Vowel 15 forms; and, as in ME, OSc munth ‘month’ < OE mōnð. 6.9 New Diphthongs in -i and -u, especially those of native origin PreSc shared in the late OE and
early ME monophthonging of the OE diphthongs: ēo > ē; ĕo > ĕ, ēa > ǣ, ĕa > æ̆. As in sME, new diphthongs arose: • by adoption from external, mainly ON
and OF, sources (see above). In most cases, loanwords containing these
diphthongs already existed in the language before the creation of new
diphthongs by native developments, which accordingly merged with them; • by development of the new native
diphthongs out of various combinations of vowels + OE, ON 6.9.1 ESc /ai/ Vowel 8 In addition to the sources listed in
§6.1, it seems that, anomalously, after ĕ, intervocalic 6.9.2 Vowels before OE word-final and pre-consonantal h /x/ In word-final and pre-consonantal
environments where it was not in immediate contact with a preceding front
vowel, OE g /ɣ/ was devoiced and merged with OE h /x/, e.g. OE swelg ‘whirlpool’ > swelch /swεlx/. This environment gives rise to diphthongs in the cases of a and o before /x/, e.g.: OE āhte, earlier *āgte, p.t. of āgan v. ‘owe’ > aucht /auxt/; OE eahta ‘eight’ likewise > aucht; OE bōg ‘bough’ > beuch /bi:ux/; similarly OE hōh ‘heel’ > heuch. 6.9.2.1 Vowels not undergoing
diphthongisation ESc differs from PreStE in
preserving the following vowels before h(t) unchanged from OE: • e + h(t): e.g. fecht; • ē + h: e.g. OE hēh (with ‘Anglian smoothing’ from hēah) > heich ‘high’; • o + ht: e.g. OE þōhte, p.t. of þencan ‘think’ > þŏhte (by Pre-Cluster Shortening) > thocht; • ā + h:
e.g. OE dāg > daich ‘dough’; and similarly ON lág-r > OSc laich ‘low’. In PreStE, ā > / 6.9.2.2 ă and ŏ before h /x/ As in sME, ă and in some dialects ŏ developed back-vowel glides onto
/x/, yielding diphthongs /au/ and / OE (Angl) hlæhhan > lauch ‘laugh’;
OE dŏhtor > douchter /'d 6.9.3 With intervocalic g In words that had final -h /x/ in OE uninflected forms, it
appears that in new inflected forms such as hēahe, hēhe ‘high’, the intervocalic consonant was in
PreSc voiced to /j/ after front vowels, /ɣ/ after back vowels. The outcomes were in some cases
different from the earlier diphthongisations in final and pre-consonantal
position. 6.9.3.1 High front vowels before intervocalic ī, ĭ + intervocalic /j/ resulted in ī /i:/ as in other environments: e.g.
OE drȳ 6.9.3.2 ē before intervocalic PreSc ē /e:/ followed by intervocalic OE drēo (In PreStE, there was a merger with
[i:j], thus StE eye, etc.) The syllable
division in these words fell between the stressed vowel and /j/, so conditions
for diphthong-formation did not come about till after the loss of final -e or the vowel of -is. This explains how hē 6.9.4 Back diphthongs in -u The most prolific of the native
sources of ESc /au/ Vowel 12 and / The mainly NE change of āw- to /ɑ:v / (with the labial preventing GVS
fronting and raising) in e.g. blyaave ‘blow’ and tyaave ‘toil’; and of ēw- to /e:v/ > /i:v/ by the GVS, in
e.g. theeveless
‘spiritless’, must have
pre-dated the vocalisation of -w- (see SND, s.v. V). 6.9.4.1 ESc /au/ Vowel 12 PreSc /a:u/, ESc /au/, Vowel 12, was developed from: • OE word-final āw: e.g. OE snāw > snaw
‘snow’; and OE pre-vocalic āw-: e.g. OE cnāwan > knaw (contrast backing and rounding of ā in sME); • OE, ON pre-vocalic āg- /a:ɣ-/ > āw- /a:w-/: e.g. OE āgen > awin
‘own’ (contrast backing and rounding of ā in sME); • OE ăw- /aw-/ > /a:w-/
by OSL: e.g. clăwu n., clăwian v. > claw; • OE, ON pre-vocalic ăg- /aɣ-/ > āg- /a:ɣ-/ by OSL, then > /a:w-/: e.g. OE sceăga
> schaw ‘coppice’. 6.9.4.2
ESc
/ PreSc / • OE pre-vocalic, also
pre-consonantal, ōw-:
e.g. OE grōwan > grow; and, with diphthongal stress-shift ȝow ‘ewe’ < OE eōwe;
and similarly, but with early yod-absorption, four /f • OE, ON pre-vocalic ōg- did not have the same outcome (see
§6.10.3). • OE, ON pre-vocalic ŏg- / • When a short back vowel was followed
by a liquid + w,
the latter either original as in OE geolw- ‘yellow’, or from earlier g, as in OE galga ‘gallows’, an epenthetic vowel
mostly spelled <o> was inserted between the liquid and the /w/, thus yallow, gallowis, presumably pronounced with
(unstressed) / In StE, this vowel monophthongised
and merged with the vowel of home, etc., perhaps in the 17th century.[106] 6.9.5 Vowel 14 6.9.5.1 ESc /i:u/ Vowel 14a The merger of /e:u/ with /i:u/ is well-evidenced in MSc rhymes, but
spelling evidence for the date of the merger in PreSc is unavailable. ME spellings, however, show <ew,
eu> applied from the late 13th century to 14a(ii), of which the
regular earlier spelling is <iw, iu, yu>. The later history of the merged
phoneme makes it certain that its realisation was [i:u] rather than [e:u]. This appears not only from the modern
dialect outcomes, /iu/ or /ju:/, but even more convincingly from the several
ESc outcomes of PreSc /o:/ before velars (see §§6.10.2, 6.10.3), all of which eventually
merged with Vowel 14a and all of which must have passed through the stages
[y:u] > [i:u], but hardly [e:u]. That it should have been the <ew,
eu> spelling option which prevailed is perhaps a little surprising. Perhaps
the explanation is the greater lexical prolificness of the /e:w/ source. OF /y:/ OF /y:/ in general remained as Vowel 7 [y:] in
PreSc. However, when final or
followed by unstressed -e or in hiatus, an allophone of this vowel must at some early date in PreSc have split from the other
allophones, thus [y:V] > [*y:wV] and [y:#] > [*y:w#], yielding the
diphthong [*y:u], which, with unrounding of the first element, eventually
merged with Vowel 14a, as /i:u/, as evidenced by MSc rhymes and spellings in <ew, eu>. Thus in these environments, the
Scots outcome of OF is the same as that in all environments in StE,
e.g. argu < OF arger, cruel < OF crel.
This phonemic split must have taken place before the fronting of PreSc
/o:/ to /y:/ Vowel 7, e.g. do v., quite distinct from Vowel 14a in argu. There also exist
some rhymes in several ESc poems, especially Legends of the Saints and the Troy-book, and a scattering of spellings from
ESc on, which indicate instead a merger with Vowel 6 /u:/. The data suggest that at some date
before the late 14th century (and probably before the shift of
stress to the first syllable in such words as argu, vertu), PreSc /y:u#, y:u+/ from OF was in some dialects smoothed, by
retraction of the first element, to /u:/, thus /*ar'gu:, *vεr'tu:/. This
variant was, however, perhaps short-lived. No /u:/ outcomes for the words in question appear to be
recorded for ModSc dialects (except, of course, when the /j/ of Vowel 14 has
been absorbed by preceding consonants). 6.9.5.2 ESc /ε:u/ Vowel 14b(i), /ε The principal
ModSc outcomes of Vowel 14b are: • /iu/ or /ju:/, the same as for 14a; • in the NE, the sequence /jʌu/, rhyming with Vowel 13, e.g.: dew, few, beauty as /djʌu, fjʌu, ‘bjʌutɪ/; in the same area ModSc sleuth has the variant slouth with yod-absorption by the
preceding liquid. This implies an
earlier /ε • in addition, most of the words of OF
origin above yielded variants with some such realisation as ESc [εau] Vowel
14b(iii), which, with regular early MSc smoothing of Vowel 12 /au/ to /ɑ:/, and presumably raising of the
first element as with 14b(i), resulted in something like [iɑ:], or, with diphthongal
stress-shift, /jɑ:/, in e.g. beauté, leauté ‘loyalty’, reaume ‘realm’; also, with yod-absorption by a preceding liquid, apparently
in the course of the early 15th century, lauté (first recorded 1452), rawme (1544). Forms of this type appear not to be recorded after the 18th
century (see e.g. SND s.v. lawtie). [But it is attractive to see NE forms such
as bljaave for blaw ‘blow’ as survivors of Vowel
14b(iii), the merger of these Vowel 12 items having been with Vowel 14b(iii)
rather than vice versa - CM]. The regular OSc spellings of vowels
14b(i) and 14b(ii) are <ew, eu>, and of 14b(iii) <eau, eaw>. Since
only 14b words have this range of outcomes, all of them must have been in
separate existence before the merger of vowels 14b(i) and 14a, i.e. in the ESc
period c1400. It is possible that their origin is
much older than that. The
speculative scenario set out in
Figure 10 would account for all the so far observed results, albeit its precise
early chronology remains unclear. 6.9.5.3 Later history of ESc /i:u/ Vowel 14a, /ε:u/
Vowel 14b(i), ?/ε The rhyme evidence suggests that 14a
and 14b(i) were merging or had merged by the mid-15th century. We may now call the merged phoneme
simply Vowel 14. In some dialects the established [i:u] realisation yielded
ModSc /iu/, surviving only in Southern Scots. In all other dialects but those of Orkney (see below), the
outcome is /ju:/. Rhyme evidence
and Vowel 6 spellings with <(y)ow> suggest that the diphthongal stress-shift,
from [í:u] to [iú:] to [ju:] took place in the first half of the 15th
century. (The histories of ȝow
pron. ‘you’, eschow ‘eschew’, Jow ‘Jew’, are not evidence of this
development. In all of these
cases, in the course of ME and PreSc, the preceding palatal continuant absorbed
the first element of Vowel 14a /i:u/.) While in almost all dialects the
Vowel 14 outcome /ju:/ indicates that the merger has been in the direction
(14b(i) > 14a), several modern Orkney dialects display outcomes such as [ɜu] which suggests the opposite
direction of merger, 14a > 14b(i), in some environments at least. In the case of dialects with Vowel
14b(ii) OSc /ε Figure 10 summarises the history of
Vowel 14 and related developments. 6.10 The Front Rounded Vowel (Vowel
7) 6.10.1 The fronting of PreSc /o:/ In the late 13th century
PreSc and nME /o:/ was fronted to /y:/, merging, in pre-consonantal
environments, with /y:/ mainly of OF origin. Rhymes of former OF
with former PreSc /o:/, e.g. multytud: stud ‘stood’, are abundant from Barbour
onwards. The fronting of PreSc
/o:/ drastically altered the shape of the long vowel system, and was ultimately
responsible for the different direction taken by the GVS in Scots and nME from
that in sME. The fronting of /o:/ involved / The Northern Scots unrounding to
/i(:)/, merging with Vowel 2, is evidenced in occasional 16th century
spellings (see §5.2.5). [There is apparently no contemporary evidence for the
same unrounding to /i(:)/ in Southern and SW Scots, but its occurrence also in
Ulster suggests that it was taken there in the early 17th century
(see Macafee, 2001, 2006) - CM.]
In regions other than Northern the vowel was thereafter lowered to [ø:],
which plausibly underlies all the other ModSc results. On the evidence of LAS3,
it continues in ModSc as a rounded vowel [ø:] in Shetland, Orkney, north Angus,
east Perthshire and Southern, or sometimes now [e:] in SVLR-long
environments. The realisation in
nEC is [e(:)] in both long and short SVLR environments. The OSc form <paig> ‘puke, the
fabric’ 1595, 1602, suggests that the unrounding to merge with Vowel 4 as
[e(:)] had begun in the second half of the 16th century. In the rest of Central and SW, ModSc
has [e:] in the long environments, and some mid front unround vowel in the
short environments, mostly [ë] or [ 6.10.2 /o:/ before the voiceless velars Early PreSc /o:/ before final /x/
and /k/ remained till the late 13th century, when it participated
regularly in the PreSc fronting to [y:] Vowel 7. Then, from the late 14th century or early 15th
century, different dialects diverged in their treatment. (1) In some dialects /y:/ remained,
developing thereafter as regular Vowel 7. Doubtless this is the form
represented by continuing OSc spellings in <u, ui, etc.>, e.g.
<pluche> ‘plough’, persisting alongside those in <eu, ew>
representing the new diphthongs.
This type appears to have predominated in OSc till the 17th
century or later; (2) in one outcome a glide [u]
developed between the long vowel and the following velar, yielding [y:u]. With unrounding of its first element,
this diphthong has then joined Vowel 14a /i:u/. This is now the most widespread
outcome; (3) in other dialects the following
velar has caused breaking of the long vowel, yielding a diphthong */j In the modern dialects both types
(2) and (3) show forms both with and without yod-absorption by preceding
liquids: thus /hjuk/ and /hjʌk/ ‘hook’, but /luk/ and /lʌk/ ‘look’. The date of the merger of (3) with
Vowel 19 / All three of these outcomes were
widely different from the corresponding outcomes in sME, which were /u:x/,
whence e.g. modStE bough /bʌu/, and also /ux/, whence modStE enough /ɪnʌf/; and /o:k/, whence e.g. modStE book /buk/. 6.10.3 /o:/ before intervocalic g /ɣ/ Early PreSc intervocalic ōg- /o:ɣ-/ > ESc [y:u], merging with Vowel 14a
/i:u/, apparently by the early 15th century, in e.g. OE bōgas pl. >
bewis
‘boughs’; genōge adj. pl. > inew ‘enough’, pl. The PreSc development of ōg- is unlike that of both PreSc ōw and sME ōg-, both of which yield / 6.10.4 Northern breaking of /y:/
before /r(d)/ In a swathe of Northern Scots from
Caithness to Aberdeen, the ModSc outcome of PreSc /o:/ before /r/ and /rd/ is
likewise Vowel 14a, e.g. mure ‘moor’, burde ‘board’, swourd ‘sword’.
After the fronting of /o:/ to [y:], the close lip-rounding has perhaps
produced a velar glide from [y] to /r/, with the following consequence: y:r(d)
> y:ur(d) > y:ur(d), merging with Vowel 14a as [i:u]. This
must have taken place before /y:/ Vowel 7 unrounded in Northern Scots to merge
with Vowel 2 as /i:/, i.e. before the late 15th century. 6.11 The effects of palatal
consonants 6.11.1 General The several environments in which
the short vowels + the palatal consonants /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ - later /nj/ or /ŋj/ (also forms
with /ŋ#), and /lj/ - occurred are
these: (1) with original tonic stress on
the syllable preceding the palatal:
e.g. OF loigne > lunȝe ‘loin’; OF coin /kuɲ/ > cunȝe; (2) with original tonic stress on
the syllable following the palatal: (a) with final vowel, e.g. menȝee ‘company’, ligne(e) ‘lineage’; (b) with vowel + one or more
consonants, e.g. opinioun. In environment (2b), /lj/ and /nj/
occur in such words as million and onion
in English as well as Scots, from ME onwards. In the other environments there
are sporadic occurrences in ME and EModE, especially in northern texts, but
only Scots continued these consonants or the palatal sequences that succeeded
them as regular constituents of the system. 6.11.2 Treatment I In the treatment shared with PreStE,
a palatal glide [-i], forming the second element of a diphthong, was inserted
between the vowel and the consonant, possibly already in OF. The borrowed consonant was realised as
dental or alveolar /l/ or /n/.
This combined with the vowel to produce the diphthongs /εi/, /ai/, /ui/ as well
as, with i, the
long monophthong /i:/. (Instances
with o seem to
be confined to environment (2b), which did not at first produce diphthongs, as
long as the stress followed the palatal). This provides sources for Vowels 8,
10 and 1, e.g.: • Vowel 8: OF /'faʎ-/ faillir > <fail(l), fale>; OF
/'fεɲ-/ feign > PreSc feign- /'fεin/ > /'fain/; • Vowel 10: OF /'buʎ-/ > <boyl>, ModSc
/bʌil/ ‘boil’ v.; • Vowel 1: OF /fa'miʎə/ famille > <famyl(e)>; OF /de'siɲ-/ designer > <desyne>. However, not all qualifying words
display these Treatment I forms. Thus OSc has brulȝe, etc. ‘to broil’ by Treatment II (below), but there
appears to be no *broil form on record. Similarly cunȝe ‘coin’.
For ‘join’, conversely, there are only the Treatment I form join /ʤuin/ and a variant june /ʤy:n/ Vowel 7, of uncertain
derivation. 6.11.3 Treatment II In this treatment, which is the more
common Scots outcome, the consonant remained palatal in PreSc, and the
preceding vowels continued as simple vowels. When, in OF, the consonant was followed in environment (1)
by a final unstressed -e, as in OF /luɲə/ loigne ‘loin’, this was continued in PreSc;
when the consonant itself was final, as in OF /kuɲ/ ‘coin’, its off-glide was extended
into an unstressed vowel, so that in both cases there was a final vowel,
probably, as the later outcomes indicate, of [ɪ]-like quality, constituting a
second syllable. This often
remains in ModSc even when the consonant has been depalatalised, e.g. NE eely
‘oil’. In later MSc, the forms in /-njɪ/ acquired dissimilated doublets in
/ŋjɪ/, again with
depalatalised modern outcomes, e.g. <spaingie, spengie> ‘Spain, Spanish’. In inflected forms the spelling
evidence suggests that both disyllabic and trisyllabic forms existed with -and e.g. /'fa(:)ljand, 'fa(:)lje:and/
and -it, e.g.
/'fa(:)ljɪt, 'fa(:)lje:ɪt/, the forms with a vowel (possibly lengthened in hiatus) being more
common. But indications of
disyllabic forms with the ending -is seem rare or non-existent: thus e.g. < failȝeis>, but apparently not
<*failȝis>. Mixed forms with the vowel of one
treatment and the consonant of the other also occur, e.g. <ballie>
‘baillie’, a common and early variant. In this treatment, the vowels were
subject to OSL, with the usual failures of OSL resulting in doublets. Examples include: OF e > OSc /ε/ Vowel 16 /'fεnjɪ/ <fenȝe, fenyhe> (and, by raising of
Vowel 16 to Vowel 15, <finȝe>), and by OSL > Vowel 3 /ε:/ /'fε:njɪ/ <feinye>. In the course of the 16th
century, Vowel 3 underwent a further development in the environments /ʧVn/ and /(st)rVn/, affecting e.g. chene
‘chain’, rene ‘rein’ strene ‘strain’, whereby Vowel 3 acquired a
diphthongal realisation approximating that reached by Vowel 1, by which it was
then captured, resulting in chyne, etc.; OF a and Gaelic /a/ > OSc /a/ Vowel 17 /'spanjɪ/ <spanȝe> ‘Spanish’ and
<ganȝe> ‘cross-bow bolt’ < Gaelic gainne, by OSL > ESc /a:/ Vowel 4, thus
<spainyie, gainȝe>;
(and with shortening of Vowel 4 at the /ε:/ stage, <genȝe>); OF u > OSc / NE eely /'ilɪ/ ‘oil’ with the regular NE outcome
of Vowel 7; OF oignon <unȝeoun,
onyon> with / OF i > OSc /ɪ/ Vowel 15 In the special case of OF i in closed syllables, before final /ɲ/, the original form may have been,
and the ESc outcome certainly was, regularly /ɪŋ/, by dissimilation from the high
front vowel, in e.g. <ring, rigne, ringne> 14th century
‘reign’. Spellings in
<-(n)gn(e)> are often, as many rhymes show, orthographic for -ing /ɪŋ/. 6.12 OF a before nasal combinations in OSc 6.12.1 All environments OF a was retracted in AN to [ɑ] before a following nasal, and this
was then lengthened to [ɑ:], and borrowed into PreSc and ME. In the environment before nasal + single consonant there are
rare OSc spellings in <ay> of dant ‘daunt’, plant, and ant ‘aunt’, which conceivably represent survivals
of this, merged with ESc [a:] Vowel 4.
Such forms are not known to survive today (unlike StE chamber). In the environment before alveolar nasal + affricate /nʧ/, /nʤ/ (with later reduction of the
affricate to simple fricative /ʃ/, /ʒ/), in e.g. branch, danger, change, there is no doubt of the existence of Scots forms in Vowel 4 (as in
many of these words in StE), either by merging of AN /ɑ:/ with PreSc /a:/ Vowel 4, or by
smoothing of /au/ to /a:/ in this environment. It is likely that some of the common OSc spellings in
<a>, such as <bran(s)che, change, manger, plan(s)chour>,
represented Vowel 4 rather than Vowel 17 forms. For the most part, Vowel 4 forms in this environment
underwent further changes (see §6.12.2).
The usual outcome in the environment
before nasal + single consonant, however, was diphthongisation of /ɑ:/ under the influence of the
following nasal to [ɑu], which was levelled with existing /au/ Vowel 12, e.g. <aunt, awnt>, <ensaumpill>
‘example’, <chaumer, chawmer>
‘chamber’. Vowel 12 forms
also occurred in the environment before alveolar nasal + affricate, thus <daunger>, etc. Forms in /a/ Vowel 17 also occur
(confirmed by modern dialect forms), arising either by earlier shortening of AN
[ɑ:] or by direct
adoption from CF [a]. Indeed, in
OSc, in the environment before nasal + single consonant, spellings of these
words in simple <a> greatly outnumber these in <au, aw>. Vowel 17 forms also seem to have
existed in the environment preceding /nʧ/ but not preceding /nʤ/. This is suggested by certain
occasional ModSc spellings cited in SND: <panch> 1706, <planching>
1914 Arg. These are less ambiguous
than the same spellings in OSc. But there is nothing to suggest any
corresponding forms in /a/ for angel, brainge, change, etc. 6.12.2 Additional developments
before alveolar nasal + affricate 6.12.2.1 All preceding
environments Further developments from Vowel 4 forms
took place in the environment before alveolar nasal + affricate. There arose a new front diphthong [ai]
by breaking of /a:/, or its fronted and raised successor by the GVS. Since OSc spellings in <ai, ay>
that might represent this diphthong could equally represent the monophthong
Vowel 4, e.g. <hainch, playnscheour, chaynge, dayngere>, this change can
only be dated from its subsequent outcomes (see below), the earliest of which in
evidence is <chenge> ‘change’ 1495. This [ai] merged with existing /ai/
Vowel 8, and shared the subsequent environmentally-conditioned development of
such Vowel 8 words as dainty, faint, paint, to /ε/ Vowel 16. It appears that
once /ai/ had been raised to /εi/, about the second half of the 15th
century, the second element of the diphthong was absorbed. Since this change is
shared by words with pre-existent /ai/, it is evident that in all of these cases
the /ε/ outcomes derive from Vowel 8 antecedents and not, as might have been
supposed if only the /nʧ/ and /nʤ/ forms were involved, directly from Vowel 4. 6.12.2.2 After /ʧ/ or /r/ and before /nʤ/ In the environment of a preceding /ʧ-/ or /r-/ and a following /nʤ/, e.g. change, range, there is a development to Vowel 3,
thus cheenge,
etc. The route to Vowel 3 may be
like that of NE /i/ in words with original Vowel 4 + /n/, e.g. ane, bane, stane, etc. (as een, been, steen, etc.); that is, it derives from
/a:/ Vowel 4, which in this environment caught up with Vowel 3 in the course of
the GVS (see §6.25.1). These words then either shared the subsequent
development of Vowel 3, i.e. in most dialects merger with Vowel 2, or shared
the subsequent environmentally-conditioned development of such Vowel 3 words as
chain, rein, strain (see §6.11.3) to merge with Vowel
1, thus chynge,
etc. Orthographic indications for forms
with Vowel 1 are scarce and late: <chynge> late 16th century,
<rynge> late 16th century, <strynge> 19th
century; but they have a wide distribution in ModSc and are therefore far from
recent, the negative indication of the absence of occurrences in Ulster
notwithstanding. As with chyne forms of chain, etc., the capture of the Vowel 3
forms by Vowel 1 perhaps took place when Vowel 3 had reached by GVS a quality
in the [e] area. It seems that an allophone of Vowel 3 had its onset lowered by
influence of the preceding /r/ or /ʧ/ and its coda raised by the following alveolar
nasal in the environment before /nʤ/, thus approaching the quality of the
diphthongised Vowel 1, ESc /i:/ > MSc /e:i/ > /ε(:)i/. 6.13
OE
(Anglian) ald
in PreSc Like sME, PreSc lengthened OE (Angl)
ă before /ld/ by
HOCL to /a:ld/. Whereas in sME the
resultant /a:/ was as usual rounded to [ In fringe areas (Orkney, Caithness,
around the Moray Firth, Argyllshire, single localities in Renfrewshire and
Wigtownshire, and Ulster) there has been a merger with the existing diphthong / The alternative Vowel 12 form, auld, etc., occupies the main Scots
dialect area. Gregg (1985)
suggested that this had spread at the expense of / 6.14 ESc /a/ and /ε/ before /rC/ 6.14.1 /a/ Vowel 17 lengthened before /r/ + consonant; /a:rC/ >
/ε:rC/ Vowel 4, shortened to /ε/ Vowel 16 Some time in the PreSc period, /a/
was lengthened before /r/ followed by any consonant. In most cases the outcome seems to have been doublet
unlengthened and lengthened forms, in Vowel 17 and Vowel 4, also sometimes
Vowel 16, presumably by shortening of Vowel 4 at the GVS [ε:] stage: there appear to be no instances of
ModSc /ε/ without also some occurrences of /e:/. Examples include OE scearn ‘dung’ > sharn, shairn (18th century), and shern (early 18th century); cart, cairt, kert; OSc arm and airm, but ModSc /erm/ and /εrm/. However, a group of words does not
participate in this change, and presents only spellings in <a> and ModSc forms
in /a/, e.g. OF-derived argu, argune
‘argue’, garnis,
varlet, and also
e.g. harsk, lark, warm. 6.14.2 /ε/ lowered before /r/ As in sME, /ε/ Vowel 16 was lowered
to /a/ Vowel 17 in the 14th century before tautosyllabic /r/ and in
Scots also intervocalic /r/. This
change was lexically very productive, but not invariable. As usual in Scots, most occurrences
have doublets with unchanged forms, e.g: gers and gars ‘grass’, gert and gart ‘great’, serk and sark ‘shirt’, stern and starn ‘star’, werld and warld ‘world’, fer and far, ger and gar ‘to cause’, wersill and warsill ‘wrestle’. There are also many words without a
recorded <a> form, e.g. ferm n. ‘farm’, ferm adj. ‘firm’, sterve, service (but serve and sarve), cercle. Since for many words the only
outcomes are /ε/ and /a/, this change appears to come after lengthening of /a/
to /a:/ in some of the same environments. But there may also have been some
chronological overlap, for a limited number of /εr/ forms do seem to have
proceeded via /ar/ to /a:r/, e.g. pertrick, partrick, pairtrik; serve, sar and ModSc sair (18th century). This may also explain the variants
in Vowel 4, with spellings from MSc onwards in <ai>, of a group of words
with earlier /ε/ + /rd, rn/, having escaped HOCL, e.g. braird ‘first shoots’, aird (whence ModSc yird, see §6.27.2) ‘earth’, and cf.
ModSc yirn
variant of earn
‘to curdle’. 6.15 Smoothings of certain Early Scots diphthongs in particular
environments 6.15.1 Smoothing of /au/ before labials and affricates As in sME, in the late 14th
century, the diphthong /au/ was smoothed to /a:/ before /f, v, d, ʤ, ʧ, tj > ʃ/, e.g. safe (< OF sauf); catioun, modern legal Scots /'keʃn/. In almost all cases there are persisting doublets in /au/
Vowel 12. 6.15.2 Conditioned smoothing of i diphthongs 6.15.2.1 Smoothing of /ai/ before front
fricatives It is now clear, pace Murray (1873), that there was no
wholesale monophthonging of ESc diphthongs in -i, and the origin of the i-digraph spellings has
been otherwise explained (see §5.1). However, there was a smoothing of /ai/ to
/a:/ in ESc, about the same time (the late 14th century), as the
more widespread smoothing of /au/ (above), in the environment of a following
/v, f, ð, θ/, e.g. the
verbs in -save (consave ‘conceive’, etc.), aither ‘either’, faith.[107] More doubtful, because of the infrequent incidence of the
possible rhyming words (such as amaze, gaze, raze) which would confirm this
development, are some words of OF origin in -ais, viz. pais ‘weight’, praise, laisere and raisin,
also abais
‘dismay’ < OF abaiss-, and raise
v. < ON reisa. On the evidence of the modern dialects,
the smoothing appears not to have reached the extreme SW. 6.15.2.2 Smoothing of / PreSc / 6.16 Reduction of -is In ESc the inflection -is /ɪs/ > /-ɪz/ was still syllabic in certain
phonetic contexts. However, from
the treatment in verse, it appears that after secondary-stressed or fully
unstressed syllables, e.g. cité ‘city’, dowcot, labour, profit, questioun, the vowel had been deleted some time before
the ESc period, as also in sME, although the spellings retain <i, y> till
the late 16th century (when not represented by the MS abbreviation
for -is). But when the preceding stem syllable
consists of a fully unstressed vowel + a liquid or nasal, it seems that
optionally the unstressed stem syllable rather than the inflection might
undergo syncope: e.g. eldris ‘elders’, noblis, watrys,
lipnis (pres. t.
of lippin v.
‘trust’); this is exemplified from the earliest ESc texts onwards. After vowels, the inflectional vowel
had likewise been absorbed before ESc: cf. rhymes such as rais p.t. ‘rose’: gays ‘goes’ (Barb. VII: 349-50), and the
metrics of lines such as: Yai bar all oyer-wayis on hand (Barb. I: 62) (references
are to McDiarmid and Stevenson's 1980-5 STS edn.). After stressed syllables ending in
sibilants there was never syncope: facis, raisis, fechis, jugis ‘judges’ (as in modStE). After other consonants, it seems that,
by the time of Barbour, retention of the vowel in this ending was optional,
though down to the 16th century unsyncopated forms seem to
predominate. 6.17 MF tonic and countertonic i adopted as Vowel 2 There is a considerable number of
words in which MF tonic ī /i:/ with unshifted stress appears in 15th century Scots or
later as Vowel 2, ESc /e:/ > MSc /i:/, e.g. habeit, baptese, obleg(e, in most cases with a doublet in the expected Vowel 1, ESc
/i:/ > MSc /e:i/, e.g. habyte.
The words in question are all relatively late adoptions as, no doubt, mots
savants. The
explanation seems to be that MF /i:/ in these words was identified with Scots
Vowel 2 as this was being raised from [e:] to [i:] by the GVS . The Vowel 2
forms are on record from the mid-15th century, suggesting that the
shift of this vowel was well under way by this time. 6.18 ESc / Luick (1903: 117), followed by
Aitken (1977), accounted for Vowel 15 forms of originally Vowel 7 words, e.g. fit ‘foot’, brither, ither, mither, widd ‘wood’, by suggesting that there
had been an unrounding and shortening of PreSc /y:/ Vowel 7, prefiguring the
later development in SVLR-short environments in modern Central dialects. However, a large body of words
originally containing Vowel 19 / 6.19 / Prior to the 15th
century, / 6.20 / Beginning in the first half of the
15th century many words containing Vowel 18 / 6.21 OSc / OSc / 6.22 Vowel 3 > /ɪ/ before /v/ or /z/ followed by a
syllabic liquid or nasal consonant About the first half of the 16th
century, and certainly before the general merger of Vowel 3 with Vowel 2, Vowel
3 ESc /ε:/, by then realised as approximately [e:], shortened to /ɪ/ Vowel 15 before /v/ or /z/ followed
by a syllabic liquid or nasal consonant, e.g. niver; the ModSc forms hivven ‘heaven’, siven ‘seven’, rizzon ‘reason’, sizzon ‘season’; and divill (the Vowel 3 form having arisen
from OE dēofles, inflected form of OE dēofol, with Pre-Cluster Shortening and later OSL of
the resultant ĕ)
. 6.23 L-vocalisation When /l/ was preceded in a stressed syllable by one of the three
short back vowels (including /a/ Vowel 17 as a back vowel) and fell within the
same closed syllable as the vowel, it vocalised to [u]: • /al/ > /au/, merging with Vowel
12, e.g. all, salt, hals ‘throat’, calk ‘chalk’, halch ‘haugh, river-meadow’, haud ‘hold’ (with irregular prior
shortening of /a:ld/), staw
(beside stall 'stole'); • / • / These changes are attested in
spelling from the first half of the 15th century. In fact, reverse spellings (see §3.3.2)
are slightly earlier than the direct evidences. It looks therefore as if these changes became established in
Central Scotland in the late 14th century or early 15th
century. A few earlier incidences,
such as <hawhes> ‘haughs’ Kelso c1240, hint at a place of origin of the
sound-changes in southern Scotland or northern England. Unvocalised doublets, surviving
alongside some of the forms that underwent l-vocalisation (LV), are visible in
many rhymes of words such as all, fall, small, thrall with the latinate suffix -all (L -ālis) in such words as celestiall, etc.:
there is no indication that this suffix ever underwent LV, and the verb sall ‘shall’, which also participates in
this set of rhymes, never displays a vocalised form. Henryson, who is thought to have come from Fife, has no
vocalised forms, in rhyme or otherwise. But others, such as Dunbar, Walter
Kennedy, Douglas and Lyndsay, employ both types of rhymes, the unvocalised type
especially in their more serious verse, with rhymes displaying vocalisation
only in colloquial passages.
Possibly the change was still in the process of diffusion. Unvocalised /al/ was evidently taken to
Ulster in the early 17th century, and survives as the dominant form
in Donegal Scots (Gregg, 1985; Macafee, 2001, 2006), as in Caithness and Insular
Scots. The doublets /fʌl/ beside /fu:/ full and /pʌl/ beside /pu:/ pull are widespread throughout
ModSc. Bull ‘papal bull’ had, according to
rule, a doublet <bow>, whereas bull ‘the animal’ had not. 6.24 Smoothing of /au/ Vowel 12
to [ Subsequent to LV, Vowel 12 /au/
became smoothed to [ 6.25 The Great Vowel Shift 6.25.1 Outline In outline, in Midland and Southern
English, the GVS, beginning in the 14th – 15th century,
raised the three lower vowels in both the front and the back series and
diphthongised the close vowels /i:/ and /u:/, so that: 
, ĭ, ȳ, ў: e.g. nine, dry;, -ĭ in e.g. haly; OE suffix -līc, -līce, ON -líg, -líga, in e.g. frendly; OE ic > I;[101] preceded by an epenthetic high
vowel, e.g. bery, belly(i)s ‘bellows’ (see §6.9.3.1);, ǣ, ĕ, æ̆: e.g. hay, hain ‘enclose’,
clay, day (see
also §6.9.1);- before a vowel, e.g. drey ‘to endure’, hey ‘high’ (see §6.9.3.2).
ward > stīward ‘steward’;
eard and hairns beside harnis ‘brains’ is of later (14th
century) origin (see §6.14.1). 
# (as in body).[104]
Lengthening of /ɪ/
Lengthening of /
ēotan strong
verb), let v.
‘permit’ (OE lǣtan
strong verb), also
lat (ON láta). (= palatal /j/ after front vowels),
OE, ON g (=
velar /ɣ/ after back vowels), or OE w, or in some cases OE h /x/. (When the vowels ī, ĭ were followed by or ū, ŭ by g or w, the outcome was, respectively, Vowel 1 long
/i:/ or Vowel 6 long /u:/.) produced the same outcome: e.g. OE wĕan > OSc wey ‘weigh’, OE *swĕan > OSc swey ‘sway’. e > OSc dry. /j/, yielded [e:j] > /e:i/ Vowel
11, which then smoothed to /e:/ Vowel 2, in e.g.:an > dre(y) ‘to endure’; OE ēae > e ‘eye’; and, apparently, by-forms of
OE wĕan
‘weigh’ and *swĕan ‘sway’.e ‘high’ (ModSc /hi:/) and hē ‘hay’ (ModSc /hεi/) came to have
such different outcomes. Likewise key has doublets from cǣe or cǣ- (OSc ke(y), ModSc /ki:/) and cǣ (OSc kay, ModSc /kεi/).
Front [i:] > [ɪi] > [əi] and eventually modEng [aɪ],
[e:] > [i:],
[ε:]
> [e:] but thereafter merged with one or other of the neighbouring vowels (=
Vowel 2 or Vowel 4),
[a:] > [ε:] and later [e(:)];
Back PreStE only
[u:] > [ʊu] > [əu], and eventually modEng [ʌu],
[o:] > [u:],
[
The ESc (and nME) system, however,
lacked back vowels in the slots occupied by sME /o:/ (since PreSc Vowel 7 had
fronted to /y:/) and sME /
The shared shift of the long front
vowels took place in Scots through the 15th and 16th
centuries. In outline, the three non-high long front vowels were each raised by
one or two stages, as shown in Figure 12, and Vowel 1, being already fully
close, could only maintain its differentiation from encroaching Vowel 2 by
becoming a diphthong. In Scots it seems that the general upwards movements of
Vowels 2, 3 and 4 came to an end with the establishment of the SVLR, whereas
the opening of Vowel 1 long continued thereafter.
It appears that Vowel 4 had been
raised from /a/ in ESc to [ε:] or [
[A conditioned early merger of Vowel
4 with Vowel 3 is indicated by the development of Vowel 4 + /n/ to merge with
/i:/ Vowel 2 in modern NE Scots, as in steen ‘stone’, etc. LAS3 data confirm that Vowel 4 does not reach /i/ except in
those dialects where Vowel 3 also does.
Although early spelling evidence for this appears to be lacking, there
is other internal evidence for an early merger of Vowel 4 with Vowel 3 in
certain environments. A number of
words, with both Vowel 3 and Vowel 4 originally, have /əi/ (Vowel 1 short) in modern Scots,
from the south coast of the Forth northwards, but concentrated in the NE. There is usually a labial element, e.g.
wame, weaver, quine, but also for instance gryte ‘great’.
The merger with Vowel 1 presumably took place when Vowels 1 and 3 passed
phonetically close to each other as [ei] and [e:] respectively. The modern distribution of /əi/ forms is regardless of whether
Vowel 3 then raised further to merge with Vowel 2. This merger of Vowel 4 with Vowel 3 is surely of some
antiquity, since those words originally with Vowel 4 have a considerable
phonetic distance to cover (Macafee, 1989: 433ff). See Figure 13 - CM.]
Vowel 2 seems to have been raised
from ESc /e:/ to near [i:] by the mid-15th century. About this time Vowel 7, ESc /y:/,
merged with it in Northern Scots.
There appears to be no direct
evidence as to the date at which Vowel 1 began diphthongising, except that it
was apparently not till after c1400. Several kinds of
evidence seem to point to a diphthong with a low to mid front first element
converging with Vowel 4 and Vowel 8 by the second half of the 16th
century.
The present-day representative of
the SVLR-short allophone of Vowel 1 is predominantly /εi/, with more or less
retracted diaphones [ε̈i], [əi], [ʌi]. Probably Vowel 1 had
opened to the extent of [ε:i] by the late 16th century if our
proposed dating of SVLR is correct (see §6.28.2). At that point, we may assume the diphthong-opening process
ceased in Vowel 1 short but continued in Vowel 1 long.
6.25.2 ESc /ε:/ Vowel 3
6.25.2.1 The modern dialect
evidence
According to LAS3’s word-lists,
Vowel 3 continues unmerged into ModSc in a small number of scattered dialects
north of Forth. In several
Caithness dialects and in Avoch (Ross and Cromarty), it has the realisation
[εi] and in some of these dialects Vowel 4 has merged with it, instead of vice
versa.
In much of Fife, Vowel 3 is found in
merger with Vowel 7 before /t/ or /d/ or both, suggesting that Vowel 3 still
survived there as a distinct phoneme until the unrounding of Vowel 7 to /e/ at
the turn of the 16th and 17th century.
In other nEC dialects, the all but
regular outcome of Vowel 3 in all environments is merger with Vowel 4 as [
In other Central, Southern and NE
dialects, Vowel 3 merges regularly with Vowel 2 as [i(:)] , in all environments.
6.25.2.2 Vowel 3 in ESc and MSc
The ESc and early MSc evidence
presents a much simpler picture.
In 15th century verse generally, Vowel 3 rhymes separately
from Vowel 2, except for limited instances of merger with Vowel 2 before
/r/.
The spelling evidence for the merger
of Vowel 3 with Vowel 4 begins with such 1488 spellings as <havin>
‘heaven’, <havy> ‘heavy’, <mar> ‘female horse’. Some spellings of this kind in the 16th
century appear to be from localities now having merger of Vowel 3 with Vowel 2,
hinting that the latter merger spread at the expense of the former (as also
apparently in PreStE). The earliest rhyme evidence so far observed comes in the
verse of Sir David Lyndsay (? 1486-1555) whom we may regard as a Fifeshire man.
However, before /r/ Lyndsay almost always rhymes Vowel 3 either with itself or
with Vowel 2. Before /d/ he rhymes
sometimes with Vowel 2 and sometimes with Vowel 4.
Gavin Douglas (early 16th
century) no longer distinguishes Vowels 2 and 3 before /r/, and he also occasionally
rhymes them before /d/. Near the
end of the 16th century, Edinburgh-born William Fowler rhymes Vowel
3 with Vowel 2 before /r, t, d, k, f/, but also with Vowel 4 before /t, d/ and
/s/. About the same time the Ayrshire man Alexander Montgomerie, the Berwickshire
man Alexander Hume and King James VI all freely rhyme Vowel 3 with Vowel 2 in
all environments.
6.26
Vowel
4 in labial environments merges with smoothed Vowel 12
In most dialects, the GVS fronting and raising of Vowel 4, ESc /a:/ was inhibited by an adjacent labial consonant, either:
(1) /(C)w-/ preceding, e.g. /twa:/
‘two’, /wa:k/ ‘wake’, or
(2) any labial consonant preceding
or following the vowel, when an unstressed syllable followed, so that the vowel
was final in an open syllable, e.g./'fa:dom/ ‘fathom’, /'ha:mər/ ‘hammer’,
(3) ? in brave > /bra:v/ <brawf> 1561,
whence braw
‘fine’,
(4) ? in na adv.3 (q.v).
This labialised [
In the dialects in which this change
did not take place, /a:/ in labial environments has had the regular outcome of
Vowel 4, viz. /e(:)/. The regional
distribution of retained Vowel 4 in environment (1) in OSc, as revealed in
localised texts, appears like that of today - sEC, Southern and eastern SW.
6.27 Preiotation of initial vowels
6.27.1 Older Scots
Occasional 16th century
spellings are evidence of the development in OSc of initial vowel variants with
a palatal glide onset:
• Vowel 4, e.g. <ȝane> ane ‘one’ 1527 Prestwick, <ȝaikin> akin ‘oaken’ 1578-9 Elgin;
• Vowels 2, 3 and 7: in <ȝerl> ‘earl’, <ȝerd, ȝeird> varr. of erde ‘earth’, and perhaps <ȝirne> ‘to curdle’, the prefixed
/j/ apparently already existed in PreSc (for a speculative explanation see s.v.
Y in SND). Other MSc instances of preiotation
before these vowels also exist, e.g. <yells> ells 1640, <ȝown> une ‘oven’ 1517;
• Sporadic examples with other front
and back vowels occur in ModSc over most of Scotland, on the evidence of SND
and LAS3.
6.27.2 The modern dialect
outcomes of initial Vowel 4
Whereas in nearly all the OSc
examples it appears from the spellings that Vowel 4 remains unchanged following
the preiotised /j/, in the modern Central and Southern instances the regular
outcome of word-initial SVLR-short Vowel 4 is Vowel 15 preceded by /j/, e.g.
<yin> ‘one’. The regular SVLR-long outcome is unchanged Vowel 4, e.g.
are ‘oar’. (Yae /je:/ ‘one’ adj. appears to be an
exception, possibly a survival of OSc preiotation, reinforced by analogy with yin.) /jɪ/ forms are evidenced only from the late 18th century on.
It appears, as Murray (1873: 105)
suggested, that /jɪ/ arose out of the Teviotdale realisation of Vowel 4, which in his time
was a diphthong [ɪə] by the more widespread outcome, the monophthong [e]. Kohler (1967) added
the corollary that the area occupied by the [ɪə] realisation of Vowel 4 had earlier
been much more extensive. The area
occupied by /jɪ/ in yin
= ane ‘one’,
etc., would thus seem to mark out the former extent of the [ɪə] area.
The northern boundary of the /jɪ/ initial SVLR-short outcome of
Vowel 4 in ModSc appears to coincide with the northern boundary of the Central
area in which Vowel 3 merged with Vowel 2 as the close front vowel /i(:)/, thus
leaving phonetic space for Vowel 4 to be raised above its regular [e(:)]
position, leading to the diphthongisation (see Aitken, 2002: Map 2).
6.27.3 Vowel 7
The development of preiotised Vowel
7 to /jɪ/, e.g. use
n., has to be seen as an independent and coincidental development. /ɪ/ arises as a local outcome of Vowel
7 in all SVLR-short environments, not only following /j/, suggesting that /jɪ/ arose out of regular OSc
preiotised Vowel 7 by unrounding, /jø/ > /jɪ/.
6.28 The Scottish Vowel-Length
Rule
6.28.1 The Scottish Vowel-Length
Rule set up
The removal of Vowel 7 from the back to the front vowel system, followed by changes in the qualities of the vowels that underwent GVS, abolished the historical vowel-length oppositions between long and short vowels that had existed at the time of OSL.
It now became possible to shorten
long vowels without, in most cases, producing mergers with existing short
vowels (but see below). This
shortening took place except in environments specially conducive to longer
vowel-duration. The resultant Scottish Vowel-Length Rule (SVLR) may be thus
expressed:
The affected stressed vowels are
realised long in end-stressed syllables before the voiced fricatives - /v, ð,
z, ʒ/ - in most
dialects /r/, before a word-boundary and in hiatus; in other environments they
are realised short.
Or, in the usual formulation:
r
V > V: /
- v z ʒ ð
#+
This then resulted in SVLR-governed
vowel-length differences between e.g.:
• Vowel 2: tree with [i:], and heich ‘high’, with [i];
• Vowel 3 is mostly merged with Vowel
2 or Vowel 4;
• Vowel 4: lave ‘remainder’ with [e:] and late with [e];
• Vowel 6: now with [u:] and about with [u];
• Vowel 7: puir ‘poor’ with [ø:] and muin ‘moon’ with [ø] (or [i:] and [i], [e:] and [e,
ɪ], etc);
• in addition, Vowel 1, following its
diphthongisation by GVS, yielded SVLR long [a:ɪ], [ɑ:e] or the like, in e.g. five, and SVLR short [εi], [əi], [ʌi] or the like, in e.g. bite;
• On Vowel 5, see below.
Notice that the first element of the
now diphthongal Vowel 1 was also shortened. It is not necessary to suppose that Vowels 8 and 12 were
still diphthongal in order to explain their opting out of the SVLR in most
dialects. This may be due
rather to the pattern of diffusion of the SVLR, from the highest to the lowest
vowel-height, thus leaving Vowels 8 and 12, and also 5, as exceptions in many
dialects. The result was a new, essentially allophonic, rule that determines
vowel-length over part of the Scots vowel-system.
At some stage, whether originally or
later, some dialects have incorporated among the vowels subject to the Rule the
ModSc diphthongs and the original non-high short vowels, including Vowels 1
short, 10 and 13, and Vowels 16, 17 and 18 (Aitken, 1981b: 134, 139, 142),
presumably by lengthening in the SVLR-long environments to conform with the
vowel-length patterns now established among the former ESc long vowels. But this tendency has never reached the
ESc short high vowels, 15 /ɪ/ and 19 /
Some features of the SVLR may have
been added later:
• Forms with the p.t. inflection /-d/
after a final stem-vowel, e.g. dee’d p.t. of dee ‘to die’, normally share the SVLR-long
realisation of the morpheme-final uninflected form, so /di:d/ dee’d ‘died’ by analogy with dee /di:/ ‘to die’, is in contrast with
SVLR-short /did/ deed n. The first record of this feature is by Sylvester Douglas (c1775), who states that pride and deny’d are non-rhyming, since, though both
contain the ‘diphthongal sound of i... in pride that sound is shortened and protracted in deny’d’ (Kohler, 1966: 36). But in late MSc
there are many rhymes of pairs of words of this sort, for instance in Fowler,
Alexander and Ayton, suggesting that this type of long-short contrast did not
yet operate;
• In stressed penultimate syllables,
bimorphemic (inflected or derivational) items share the SVLR-length of the
uninflected or underived stem: so useful has the SVLR-short in ['jïsfɪ] but using the SVLR-long in ['je:zɪn], and leafy has [i] like leaf, but leaving has [i:] like leave.
6.28.2 The date of the establishment of the Scottish Vowel-Length
Rule
Gburek (1986) suggested that an
incipient SVLR was involved in pre-GVS changes in strong verb paradigms. Aitken did not rule out the possibility
of allophonic shortening at an early date, compatible with occasional captures
by short vowels of shortened (? half-long) allophones of their long
equivalents, particularly in the Central dialects where the Rule apparently
originated; but the Rule could
only manifest itself fully after GVS had brought about the changes of vowel
quality which made the former oppositions by quantity functionally redundant
(1981: 154). Had the SVLR been in
full operation at the time of the GVS (15th century), a general
merger of Vowel 4 in short environments with Vowel 16 (ESc /ε/), might have
been expected.
An indication that the Rule is
long-established lies in its universal application throughout Scotland and
Scots-speaking parts of Ulster.
Since SVLR is well established in the dialects of Shetland and of
Orkney, it seems to follow also that it was in operation before the main
colonisation of these islands by Scots-speakers was completed (i.e. by the late
16th century).
The fact that Shetland meed (formerly meethe) 'landmark', buid (formerly buith) 'booth', etc. take long vowels
suggests a date before c1560 by which time Shetland /ð/ > /d/. [Around the same time, Peebles
Burgh Records have spellings indicating the merger of Vowel 17 and Vowel 12
(see below), e.g. <bailk> 'back' and <sailfand> (= saufand 'saving') 1564, <lawdis> 'lads' 1572. Meurman-Solin (1999) has also suggested
that the use of short vowel spellings for long vowels, for which she has
examples from as early as the 1540s, indicates SVLR-shortening. However, as she also points out, a
number of her examples are in the pre-/r/ environment - CM.]
6.28.3 Mergers consequent on the
Scottish Vowel-Length Rule
In most modern dialects, the new
monophthong Vowel 12 contrasts with Vowel 17, but in some (mainly Orkney,
Caithness and a band across southern Scotland), they have merged as /a/ in most
environments. In some, especially
WC, dialects, Vowel 18 has closed and merged with Vowel 5, as /o:/, though in
most other dialects the two remain distinct, either by virtue of an opener
realisation of Vowel 18, [ɔ] or the like, or by virtue of Vowel 5's having maintained length in
SVLR-short environments, [o:] or the like; or in some dialects both. Long
realisations of Vowel 8 in SVLR-short environments are another case in which
vowel-length oppositions continue to function in some ModSc dialects. The fairly common Eastern realisation,
from Shetland southwards, of Vowel 16 as long [ε:] is perhaps motivated by
avoidance of merger with Vowel 15, realised as [
6.28.4 Scottish Vowel-Length
Rule-conditioned splits
From the beginning SVLR appears to
have been a phonetic rule, operating over a particular set of phonemes in a given dialect
and controlling the allophonic systems of these phonemes. Nevertheless there have also from time
to time occurred SVLR-conditioned splits at the phonological level, when in a
particular dialect or group of dialects the SVLR-short allophone of a certain
phoneme has parted finally from its SVLR-long companion. One case is the several Southern and
Central splits of Vowel 7, with the SVLR-long continuing as [ø:] or unrounding
to [e:] in e.g. puir ‘poor’ and yuize ‘use’ v.; and the SVLR-short deviating as [ɪ] or [
6.29 The later history of Vowel 8
/ai/
The later history of ESc /ai/ Vowel
8 and its relations with, in particular, Vowel 4, differs greatly amongst its
several environments, specifically amongst word-initial, word-medial
SVLR-short, word-medial SVLR-long (effectively, before /r/), and word-final. In the word-initial environment, the preiotation of
Vowel 4 (see §6.27.2) means that Vowels 4 and 8 remain distinct over most of
modern Central and Southern, whereas
they are usually merged in word-medial SVLR-short environments (see
Aitken, 2002: Map 2).
6.29.1 Final position
There are three different modern outcomes of Vowel 8 in final position:
(1) a diphthong, [εi], [
(2) doublets in the diphthong above and in Vowel 4 /e:/ of early
origin. In the case of two of
these words, both of OF origin, pay and according to Murray (1873: 77) pray, these doublet outcomes arose quite
early in PreSc: OF pajier and prejier > respectively paijer and preijer > PreSc /'paijə(n)/ and /'praijə(n)/, yielding dual results when the
sequence /-aij-/ was simplified, either /'p(r)aiə(n)/ or /'p(r)a:jə(n)/, with the vowel lengthened
either by OSL or by compensatory lengthening; leading eventually to /'p(r)ai/ or /'p(r)a:/. The other two words of this
group are: thay
pron., with doublet outcomes from /θai/ < ON þeir and /θa:/ < OE þā
‘those’ pl. demonstrative, with which
the former was confused; and may /mai/ < OE mæg and its doublet /ma:/ < ON má;
(3) other doublets with a diphthong as in (1) above and a
monophthong, still occasionally separate, but merged in most ModSc dialects
with Vowel 4, e.g. day, Tay, lay v.;
the monophthongal form also appears sporadically in e.g. may, stay, and way. It seems that we are witnessing the latter stages of a
process of lexical diffusion whereby Vowel 4 /e:/ is superseding a more
original monophthong. However, the
ModSc forms waw ‘way’
and awaw ‘away’,
and OSc maw,
rare variant of may v., appear to arise out of Vowel 4 forms treated in labial environments
as described in §6.26.
A distinguishing feature of the
words in group (3) was that all occurred in inflected forms, albeit only
infrequently in the case of some items.
In these inflected forms, such as ['daiɪz], pl. of day, the [i] element of the diphthong
was absorbed by the inflectional vowel and the [a] lengthened in compensation,
yielding ['da:ɪz], which, with deletion of the
inflectional vowel in hiatus > 14th century [da:z] . From Barbour on there are numerous
rhymes proving the contraction of inflectional /-ɪz/ in such cases.
Some (perhaps only the earlier) 15th-
and 16th century poets keep separate in rhyme Vowel 4 final from any
Vowel 8 final, including our group (3).
Other poets, however, do rhyme Vowel 4 and Vowel 8 group (3), among them
Henryson and Lyndsay.
6.29.2 Non-initial, non-final
environments
6.29.2.1 Long environments
Before /v/, /ð/ and /z/, most or all of the words which would otherwise have yielded Vowel 8, ESc /ai/, had already had their diphthongs smoothed to Vowel 4 /a:/ (see §6.15.2.1).
In most ModSc dialects Vowels 4 and
8 have merged before /r/, mostly as [e:], as they have in other SVLR-long
environments. Some earlier OSc
poets, including Barbour and Henryson and the authors of the The Buke of the Sevyne Sagis and The Buke of the Chess, seem to have kept ESc /a:/ Vowel 4
separate in rhyme from /ai/ Vowel 8 before /r/. Others, however, rhyme them
freely. It seems then that Vowel 4
and Vowel 8 merged before /r/, beginning in the early to mid-15th
century, apparently by smoothing of the diphthong of Vowel 8.
6.29.2.2 When did the merger of Vowels 4
and 8 in short environments begin?
The overwhelming majority of the OSc rhymes apparently showing Vowel 4 rhyming with Vowel 8 involve members of pairs of etymological doublets in Vowel 4 and Vowel 8. Once these are excluded, the number of rhymes between Vowels 4 and 8 in SVLR-short environments is exiguous: possibly such rhymes were imperfect but approximate.
There seem to be no clear clues as
to when Vowel 8 became a monophthong in non-final short environments. The
strongest indication perhaps is that the monophthongal outcome prevails
throughout the entire Scots-speaking area, including Orkney and Shetland.
The quality of the smoothed Vowel 8
is, in nearly all modern dialects, close to or identical with that of Vowel 4.
In many conservative dialects the distinction between the two is that of
quantity only, Vowel 4, being subject to SVLR, having undergone shortening to
[e] in the SVLR-short environments; while Vowel 8, not subject to SVLR, remains
long in all environments. It seems to follow from this that Vowel 4 had already
undergone SVLR-shortening before Vowel 8 became smoothed from a diphthong to a
monophthong, or the two, being of very similar quality, would have merged as
[e:] and shown identical outcomes in the same environments. Thus it seems that
the smoothing of Vowel 8 to a long monophthong, probably [e:], in all of its
non-final environments, came about later than the establishment of SVLR in
these dialects.
This chronology accounts well enough
for those dialects in which merger of Vowel 8 (invariably long) with SVLR-short
Vowel 4 has not taken place.
However, in many SW dialects, Vowel 8 has remained unmerged, as the
result of maintaining a lower height than Vowel 4, but nevertheless operates
SVLR. Whether this was due to early monophthongisation, with Vowel 8 shadowing
Vowel 4 through the GVS at a lower height, does not seem ascertainable.
In some Tayside dialects, SVLR has
not reached the non-high vowels, including Vowel 4, which has accordingly
merged, as a uniformly long vowel, with Vowel 8.
The dialectological evidence
suggests that the more usual merger of SVLR-subject Vowels 4 and 8 is an
on-going change, which has been spreading outwards since its beginning,
apparently in some Central dialect, some time after the establishment of SVLR.
