Dialect variation in Scottish Gaelic nominal morphology

A quantitative study

Bibliographic Data

ID22130384
AuthorsPavel Iosad (0000-0002-9200-6682, University of Edinburgh), William Lamb (0000-0002-9421-053X, University of Edinburgh)
Year2020
Volume5
Issue1
Publication date2020-12-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlossa a journal of general linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2397-1835 • E-ISSN: 2397-1835
PublisherOpen Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5334/gjgl.1023
OpenAlexW3115634274
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited30

This paper presents a dialectometric analysis of Scottish Gaelic morphology, with a focus on the noun phrase, using previously unpublished data from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland. Fifty-five morphological features were extracted across 201 survey points, and the data subjected to a variety of analyses, including cluster analysis, regression, and correlation analysis. We establish that the Gaelic noun system shows robust diatopic (i.e. geographical) variation; this challenges previous assertions in the literature, which describe Gaelic morphosyntax as geographically uniform. In addition, we argue that our dialectometric results provide an insight into the grammatical structure of the language that is not easily achievable through the analysis of individual varieties. In particular, we argue that the results highlight a dissociation between morphological categories such as case and gender and their morphophonological exponents, which are particularly complex in Scottish Gaelic. The paper thus serves as a proof of concept for the use of dialectometric findings in a theoretical context

Linguistics · Noun · Noun phrase · Phrase · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Artificial Intelligence

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