1. Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster 12-14 August 2015 Introducing FITS Rhona Alcorn Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics University of Edinburgh with Vasilis Karaiskos, Joanna Kopaczyk, Bettelou Los, Warren Maguire, Benjamin Molineaux & Daisy Smith 1

2. From Inglis to Scots (FITS): Mapping sounds to spellings £1M AHRC-funded project at AMC RQ: How did the highly distinctive form of speech that evolved in Scotland in the Middle Ages develop? 5 researchers, 1 programmer, 1 PhD student + advisory panel of experts Apr 2014 – Mar 2018 2

3. From Inglis to Scots: ‘Inglis’‘Scots’ C12-C15C16 onwards Mapping sounds to spellings Inglis & Early Scots pre-date the era of recorded sound, so we rely on their written language for evidence No national standard of spelling until very much later so ESc spellings are highly variable 3 See further: Aitken 1971, Macafee & Aitken 2002, McClure 1995, Jones 1997

4. ‘earl’in 15 th -century Scots 4

5. ‘both’in 15 th -century Scots 5

6. ‘law’in 15 th -century Scots 6

7. Spelling as a window on MidEng Phonology No national written standard in MidEng So ME spellings are highly variable too Clues to features of spoken language, e.g. – [h] dropping: (h)ard ‘hard’, (h)euene ‘heaven’ – fricative loss: ni(h)t ‘night’, ri(ch)te ‘right’ – Nth. stan, ban, ham ~ Sth. ston, bon, hom ‘stone, bone, home’ 7 Spelling as a window on spoken language

8. Spelling as a window on ESc phonology Some progress, e.g. Johnston (1997), Aitken (2002) But the focus has tended towards: – major developments, i.e. those with reflexes in ModSc – distinctive developments, i.e. those that distinguish Scots from English 8

9. Like Aitken (2002) we will trace the history of individual speech sounds rather than individual words Unlike Aitken we focus on: – the period to 1500 – the language of documents – words of Germanic origin – all types of speech sounds – rare as well as common spelling variants – regional as well as temporal developments 9 FITS: methodology

10. ESc spellings: our data source A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots corpus: – 1,400+ diplomatically-transcribed, local texts – All dated before 1500 when Scots was flourishing as a national language before anglicisation effects took off – All dated after 1380 no older texts of this type survive 10

11. 1380-1500 spellings 1380-1500 sound systems FITS: methodology sound-spelling mappings

12. Spelling complexities: Mod St. English A letter may have > 1 sound – : electric [k], electricity [s] – : beard [i], break [e], heard [ɛ], heart [a] A sound may have > 1 representations – [ʤ]: jump, germ, ledger – [i]: feet, beat, grieve, deceive Our analysis will capture phonotactic data 12

13. 1380-1500 spellings 1380-1500 sound systems Sources of the 1380-1500 sound systems FITS: methodology diachronic correspondences (= the CC) sound-spelling mappings

14. Designed and built – Primary data extractor tool – Data analysis tool – FITS database – CC database – FITS website ( amc.lel.ed.ac.uk/fits/) Lots of level 1 analyses (Esc Spellings :: ESc Sounds) First set of data ready for level 2 (diachronic) analysis 14 Progress so far

15. A freely-available, fully-searchable, online database to answer user-defined Qs like: – what does Inglis represent? – when and where did [v]-deletion begin? – which aspects of Scots are not of OE origin? Digital maps to display answers temporo- spatially Workshops to introduce FITS tools A transferrable methodology 15 Expected outputs

16. Aitken, A.J. 1971. Variation and variety in Middle Scots. In A.J. Aitken et al. (eds.) Edinburgh Studies in English and Scots, 177-209. London: Longman. Aitken, A.J. 2002. The Older Scottish Vowels. Ed. C. Macafee. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society. CoNE: Lass, R., M. Laing, R. Alcorn & K. Williamson (eds.). 2013. A Corpus of Narrative Etymologies from Primitive OE to Early ME. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/CoNE/CoNE.html Johnston, P. 1997. Older Scots phonology. In Jones (ed.). Jones, C. (ed.) 1997. The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: EUP. LAOS: A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots 1380-1500, ed. K. Williamson. 2008. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos1.htmlwww.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos1.html Macafee, C. & A.J. Aitken. 2002. A History of Scots to 1700. www.dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/history-of-scots/ McClure, J.D. 1995. Scots and its Literature. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 16 References

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