The vowel /əː/ ao in Gaelic dialects
Abstract
This paper examines the development of the Old Irish diphthongs */ai/, */oi/, */ui/ in later varieties of the Gaelic languages. These are generally accepted to have merged as a single phoneme by the end of the Old Irish period (c. 900). In all modern varieties the regular reflex of this phoneme is a long monophthong, represented orthographically as <ao>. There are three main developments: (a) in southern Irish <ao> has merged with /eː/ and/or /iː/; (b) in southern Scottish and Manx varieties <ao> remains a mid-central vowel, may be fairly fronted and may perhaps have weak rounding; and there is merger between /əː/ representing <ao> and reflexes of earlier */aɣ/; (c) in northern Scottish and northern Irish varieties <ao> is realized as a high back unrounded vowel /ɯː/, which is contrastive with mid back unrounded /ɤː/ representing earlier */aɣ/ (these may merge with /iː/ and /eː/ in Ulster). Building on suggestions of earlier scholars, it is argued that it is the developments of */əː/ are explained by its anomalous position in the phonological system of earlier varieties of Gaelic, and its interactions with the palatalization contrast of the consonant system.
This is an Open Access journal. All material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, unless otherwise stated.
Please read our Open Access, Copyright and Permissions policies for more information.