Shetland Scots as a new dialect: phonetic and phonological considerations

Abstract

The dialect of Scots spoken in the Shetland Islands has been variously described as a language shift variety, acquired when the islanders abandoned their native Norn for Scots from the sixteenth century onwards, or a continuation of the dialects brought to Shetland by Scottish immigrants in the same period. More recently, Millar (2008) discussed the origins of Shetland Scots in a theory of new-dialect formation (Trudgill 2004), which allows for a combination of earlier explanations. In this article, I give a systematic analysis of the phonetics and phonology of Early Shetland Scots in comparison to Norn and mainland Scots dialects. The Shetland Scots data are largely consistent with theoretical expectations, lending further support to the new-dialect reading of the dialect's diachronic development.

Historical Demography and Historical Sociolinguistics: The Role of Migrant Integration in the Development of Dunkirk French in the 17th Century

“…At the same time, comparing our results to historical demographic and linguistic evidence from other relevant communities will establish the role that purely demographic factors played in language shift in the early modern period. Similarities between our findings and those from a study of the Norn-to-Scots language shift in Shetland and the origins of Shetland Scots (Knooihuizen, 2008(Knooihuizen, , 2009 suggest there are common sociolinguistic patterns in shift that further research taking a 'from below' approach will be able to help uncover.…”

Are there impossible changes? θ > f but f ≯ θ

“…In Table 2, apparent independent developments are summarized from different parts of the globe. All have, as a result of apparently regular sound change, the elimination of dental fricatives from Knooihuizen (2009) argues that simple take--over from Norn does not explain the whole story for Shetland stopping, but a contact account for a change does not require an absolute and overwhelming causative explanation -it only requires an exogenous source for the variant that becomes embedded in the system (in this case, stops as possible realisations of what were fricatives in the varieties of Scots that were brought to Shetland), and this is clearly plausible here. Knooihuizen (2009) argues (in part following Millar 2008) that Shetland Scots was formed through a process of new--dialect formation, that a Norn-influenced L2 variety was one of the dialects involved, and that this accounts for the 'dental fricative stopping' found in Shetland.…”

Language shift and apparent standardisation in Early Modern English

“…Koinéisation is therefore most applicable to colonial varieties such as New Zealand English (Trudgill 2004), although the process is claimed to have occurred in other settings as well. This includes language-shift varieties such as Shetland Scots (Millar 2008;Knooihuizen 2009) as well as settings where the immigrant population is so much more numerous than the founder population that the latter become "swamped". This happened, for example, in the development of the new dialect of Milton Keynes (Kerswill and Williams 2000).…”

“…The geographical background of the migrants was diverse, with different areas of especially the East of Scotland represented (this can be deduced from linguistic evidence in Millar 2008: 247;see also Catford 1957a: 57). It is generally believed that alongside political change and despite links with Norway continuing to some extent (Smith 1990), the migration of Scots to Shetland was a major contributing factor to the language shift from Norn to Scots (Millar 2008;Knooihuizen 2009). …”