1. The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith c.nance.1@research.gla.ac.uk j.stuart-smith@englang.arts.gla.ac.uk University of Glasgow

2. Overview Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective Stop consonants in Gaelic Acoustics of stops in Gaelic Research questions Methods Results Ongoing work Discussion

3. Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective Bilingualism Language contact (Thomason 2007) Obsolescence and revitalisation (Dorian 1981, Jones 1998) Acoustic phonetic study of linguistic variation

4. Stop consonants in Gaelic Stops Word initial /p h t h k h / and /p t k/ Word medial and word final / h p h t h k/ and /p t k/ (Ladefoged et al. 1998) (Also palatalised vs. velarised distinction)

5. Initial stops bog ‘soft’ pòg ‘a kiss’ VOT Vowel voicing Closure Vowel voicing Closure

6. Pre-aspiration ‘Delay in the offset of normal voicing’ (Laver 1994:150) Vocal fold vibration and airflow independent

7. Pre-aspiration smoc ‘smoke’ snog ‘nice’ Vowel voicing Close Pre-asp Vowel voicing Closure

8. Pre-aspiration zoom in smoc ‘smoke’ Vowel voicing Close Pre-asp

9. Pre-aspiration zoom in smoc ‘smoke’ Close Pre-asp Breathy Voice Noise

10. Research Questions What are the phonetic correlates of the contrast /p h t h k h / and /p t k/ in modern Gaelic? Is this system changing?

11. Methods Native speakers of Lewis Gaelic 3 older generation, 3 younger Recording conditions Word list data 2257 tokens analysed Non-parametric statistical tests

12. Durational measures Segmenting on the waveform in Praat Modal voice Vowel Pre-aspiration BV Noise acaaca

13. VOT: Cho and Ladefoged (1999) Results – word initial

14. Results – word medial and final Pre-aspiration makes the contrast

15. Differences - initial

16. Differences – medial and final Calculated proportionally as well as raw numbers Breathy voice, closure, vot ns. Detail of pre-aspiration

17. Can you hear the difference? Older speaker: boc ‘male goat’Younger speaker: boc ‘male goat’ Younger speaker: smoc ‘smoke’Older speaker: smoc ‘smoke’

18. Summary Younger speakers: Longer VOT word initial position Shorter pre-aspiration word medial and final Pre-aspiration different: less voiceless

19. Ongoing work Adapted Zero Crossing Rate (Gordeeva and Scobbie 2010) In collaboration with Olga Gordeeva Quantifies pre- and post- aspiration Counts zero crossings in a band pass filtered sound file

20. Some preliminary results: Initial /k h /, /k/

21. Word medial / h k/, /k/

22. Conclusion Apparent time differences Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998): Real time change?

23. Conclusion Apparent time differences Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998): Real time change?

24. Conclusions Gradient phonetic shift (Babel 2009, Bybee 2010) Obsolescence / contact / ‘normal’ change? Lexical attrition

25. References Babel, M., 2009. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute. In J. Stanford and D. Preston, eds., Variation in indigenous minority languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Bybee, J., 2010. Language usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cho, T., and Ladefoged, P., 1999. Variation and universals in VOT: evidence from 18 endangered languages. Journal of phonetics, 27, pp. 207-229 Dorian, N., 1981. Language death: the life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press Gordeeva, O., and Scobbie, J., 2010. Preaspiration as a correlate of word-final voice in Scottish English fricatives. In S. Fuchs, M. Toda, M. Zygis, eds., Turbulent sounds: an interdisciplinary guide. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Jones, Mari, 1998. Obsolescence and revitalization: linguistic change in two sociolinguistically contrasting Welsh communities. Oxford: Blackwell Ladefoged, P., and Ladefoged, J., Turk, A., Hind, K., Skilton, St. J., 1998. Phonetic structures of Scottish Gaelic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28, pp. 1-41 Laver, J., 1994. Principles of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press MacKinnon, K., 2010. Scottish Gaelic today: social history and contemporary status. In M. Ball and N. Müller, eds., The Celtic languages. 2 nd. ed. London: Routledge Silverman, D., 2003. On the rarity of pre-aspirated stops. Journal of linguistics, 39:3. pp. 575-598 Thomason, S., 2007. Language contact: an introduction. 4 th ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

26. Mòran Taing Collaborator: Olga Gordeeva, Acapela Group ogordeeva@gmail.com My informants: Christeen Combe, Aonghas MacCoinnich and all those who wished to remain anonymous Research funded by a Kelvin-Smith Scholarship, University of Glasgow

27. The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith c.nance.1@research.gla.ac.uk j.stuart-smith@englang.arts.gla.ac.uk University of Glasgow