Cover not available

In:Pluricentricity and Pluriareality: Dialects, Variation, and Standards
Edited by Philipp Meer and Ryan Durgasingh
[Studies in Language Variation 32] 2025
► pp. 141–164

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 7
A Scottish perspective on the pluricentricity/pluriareality debate

 | University of Koblenz, Germany
Published online: 16 January 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.32.07wei
Abstract
This study tests the implications of the pluricentric and pluriareal models with respect to prosody by analyzing the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR) in Scottish Standard English (SSE). Scotland is a particularly interesting example for the pluricentricity/pluriareality debate due to its linguistic and political situation. After a brief introduction of the context, this study applies linear mixed-effects modeling to account for variation in SVLR patterns while taking prosodic features as well as sociolinguistic factors into account. The findings are interpreted from the pluricentric and pluriareal perspectives and show that intralinguistic features rather than geographical factors influence variation in SVLR patterns. I therefore conclude that a mutual juxtaposition of the two approaches is neither necessary nor beneficial when it comes to modeling variation in standard languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pluricentricity, pluriareality and the interesting case of Scotland
    • 2.1The political status and linguistic history of Scotland
    • 2.2Vowel patterns in Scottish and British English
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Dataset
    • 3.2Data preparation
    • 3.3Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Linear mixed effects modeling for /i/
    • 4.2Linear mixed effects modeling for /aɪ/
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
References (44)
References
Agutter, Alex. 1988. The dangers of dialect parochialism: The Scottish vowel length rule. In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical Dialectology: Regional and Social, 1–22. Berlin: De Gruyter Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aitken, Adam Jack. 1979. Scottish Speech: A historical view, with special reference to the Standard English of Scotland. In Adam J. Aitken & Thomas MacArthur (eds.), Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: W & R Chambers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1981. The Scottish Vowel-length Rule. In M. Benskin & M. L. Samuels (eds.), So meny people longages and tonges: philological essays in Scots and mediaeval English presented to Angus McIntosh. Edinburgh: Benskin & Samuels.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ashby, Simone, Mário E. Viaro, Silvia Barbosa & Neuza Campaniço. 2012. Modeling phonetic variation in pluricentric languages: An integrative approach. Dialectologia, vol. 8, 1–26.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2020. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.1.38, Retrieved from: [URL]
Chen, Matthew. 1970. Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of the consonant environment. Phonetica, vol. 22. 129–159. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chevalier, Florent. 2019. On sound change and gender: The case of vowel length variation in Scottish English. Anglophonia, vol. 27 [Online]. Retrieved from: [URL] (Date: 20.03.2020)
Clyne, Michael. 1989. Pluricentricity: National variety. In Ulrich Ammon (ed.), Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, 357–371. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. The Pluricentricity Debate: On Austrian German and Other Germanic Standard Varieties. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elspaß, Stephan; Dürscheid, Christa & Arne Ziegler. 2017. Zur grammatischen Pluriarealität der deutschen Gebrauchsstandards — oder: Über die Grenzen des Plurizentrizitätsbegriffs. [Online]. Retrieved from: [URL]
Giegerich, Heinz Joachim. 1992. English phonology: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hewlett, Nigel, Ben Matthews & James M. Scobbie. 1999. Vowel duration in Scottish English speaking children. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2157–2160. [Online]: Retrieved from: [URL]
Jackson, Ben. 2020. The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. 2007. Scottish English and Scots. In David Britain (ed.), Language in the British Isles, 105–121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jones, Charles. 2002. The English Language in Scotland: An Introduction to Scots. Glasgow: Tuckwell Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katz, Jonah. 2012. Compression effects in English. Journal of Phonetics, vol. 40, 390–402. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lanwermeyer, Manuela, Johanna Fanta-Jende Alexandra N. Lenz & Katharina Korecky-Kröll. 2019. Competing norms of standard pronunciation: Phonetic analyses on the ‹-ig›-variation in Austria. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica, vol. 27. 143–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leith, Dick & Liz Jackson. 1997. The origins of English. In David Graddol, Dick Leith, Joan Swann, Martin Rhys & Julia Gillen (eds.), Changing English, 39–77. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Llamas, Carmen; Dominic Watt, Peter French & Lisa Roberts. 2011. Effects of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule on vowel quantity in Tyneside English. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1282–1285. [Online]: Retrieved from: [URL]
Lodge, K. R. 1984. Studies in the Phonology of Colloquial English. London & Sidney: Croom Helm Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McArthur, Tom. 1992. The Scots — bilingual or just confused? World Englishes 11 (2/3). 101–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McClure, J. Derrick. 1977. Vowel duration in a Scottish accent. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 7(1). 10–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1994. English in Scotland. In R. Burchfield (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language — Volume V English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Developments, 23–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McMahon, April M. S. 1991. Lexical phonology and sound change: The case of the Scottish vowel length rule. Journal of Linguistics, vol. 27. 29–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milroy, James R. D. 1995. Investigating the Scottish vowel length rule in a Northumbrian dialect. Newcastle and Durham Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 4, 187–196.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muhr, Rudolf. 1997. Zur Terminologie und Methode der Beschreibung plurizentrischer Sprachen und deren Varietäten am Beispiel des Deutschen. In Rudolf Muhr & Richard Schrodt (eds.), Österreichisches Deutsch und andere nationale Varietäten plurizentrischer Sprachen in Europa: Empirische Analysen. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
National Records of Scotland. 2015. Scotland’s Census 2011 — Gaelic report (part 1). [Online]. Retrieved from: [URL]
Niehaus, Konstantin. 2015. Areale Variation in der Syntax des Standarddeutschen: Ergebnisse zum Sprachgebrauch und zur Frage Plurizentrik vs. Pluriarealität. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 82(2). 133–168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rathcke, Tamara V. & Jane H. Stuart-Smith. 2016. On the Tail of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow. Language and Speech 59(3). 404–430. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2020. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. [Computer program]. Version 4.0.3, Retrieved from: [URL]
Ruette, Tom, Dirk Speelman & Dirk Geeraerts. 2014. Lexical variation in aggregate perspective. In Augusto Soares da Silva (ed.), Pluricentricity: Language Variation and Sociocognitive Dimensions, 103–126. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scobbie, James M., Nigel Hewlett & Alice Turk. 1999. Standard English in Edinburgh and Glasgow: The Scottish Vowel Length Rule revealed. In P. Foulkes & G. Docherty (eds.), Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scobbie, James M. 2005. Interspeaker variation among Shetland Islanders as the long term outcome of dialectally varied input: Speech production evidence for fine-grained linguistic plasticity. QMUC Speech Science Research Centre Working Paper WP2, 1–9.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. 2014. Global diffusion, regional attraction, local roots? Sociocognitive perspectives on the pluricentricity of English. In Augusto Soares da Silva (ed.), Pluricentricity: Language Variation and Sociocognitive Dimensions, 191–226. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schützler, Ole, Ulrike Gut & Robert Fuchs. 2017. New perspectives on Scottish Standard English: Introducing the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English. In Sylvie Hancil & Joan C. Beal (eds.), Perspectives on Northern Englishes. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane H. 2008. Scottish English: phonology. In Bernd Kortmann & Clive Upton (eds.), Varieties of English: The British Isles. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tanner, James, Morgan Sonderegger Jane H. Stuart-Smith & Josef Fruehwald. 2020. Toward “English” Phonetics: Variability in the Pre-consonantal Voicing Effect Across English Dialects and Speakers. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 3. 1–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turk, Alice; Satsuki Nakai & Mariko Sugahara. 2006. Acoustic Segment Durations in Prosodic Research: A Practical Guide. In Petra Augurzky, Denisa Lenertova, Roland Meyer, Ina Mleinek, Sandra Pappert, Nicole Richter, Johannes Schließer & Stefan Sudhoff (eds.), Methods in Empirical Prosody Research, 1–28. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turk, Alice & Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel. 2000. Word-boundary-related durational patterns in English. Journal of Phonetics, vol. 28. 397–440. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leyden, Klaske. 2002. The Relationship between Vowel and Consonant Duration in Orkney and Shetland Dialects. Phonetica, vol. 59. 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watt, Dominic & Catherine Ingham. 2000. Durational evidence of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Berwick English. In Diane Nelson & Paul Foulkes (eds.). Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 8. 205–228.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watt, Dominic & Jillian Yurkova. 2007. Voice Onset Time and the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Aberdeen English. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1521–1524.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weilinghoff, Andreas J. forthcoming. Vowel Duration Patterns in Scottish English: The Scottish Vowel Length Rule in the 21st century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wells, John Christopher. 1982. Accents of English 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue