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This article is about the phonology of the Scottish Gaelic language. There is no standard variety of Scottish Gaelic; although statements below are about all or most dialects, the north-western dialects (Hebrides, Skye and the Northwest Highlands) are discussed more than others as they represent the majority of speakers. Gaelic phonology is characterised by: *a phoneme inventory particularly rich in sonorant coronal phonemes (commonly 9 in total) *a contrasting set of palatalised and non-palatalised consonants *strong initial word-stress and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables *The presence of preaspiration of stops in certain contexts *falling intonation in most types of sentences, including questions *lenition and extreme sandhi phenomena Due to the geographic concentration of Gaelic speakers along the western seabord with its numerous islands, Gaelic dialectologists tend to ascribe each island its own dialect. On the mainland, no clear dialect boundaries have been established to date but the main areas are generally assumed to be Argyllshire, Perthshire, Moidart/Ardnamurchan, Wester Ross and Sutherland. ==History of the discipline== Descriptions of the language have largely focused on the phonology. Welsh naturalist Edward Lhuyd published the earliest major work on Scottish Gaelic after collecting data in the Scottish Highlands between 1699 and 1700, in particular data on Argyll Gaelic and the now obsolete dialects of north-east Inverness-shire.〔Campbell, JL & Thomson, D. ''Edward Lhuyd in the Scottish Highlands 1699-1700'' Oxford (1963)〕 Following a significant gap, the middle to the end of the twentieth century saw a great flurry of dialect studies in particular by Scandinavian scholars, again focussing largely on phonology: *1938 Nils Holmer ''Studies on Argyllshire Gaelic'' published by the University of Uppsala *1937 Carl Borgstrøm ''The Dialect of Barra'' published by the Norsk Tidskrift for Sprogvidenskap *1940 Carl Borgstrøm ''The Dialects of the Outer Hebrides'' published by the Norsk Tidskrift for Sprogvidenskap *1941 Carl Borgstrøm ''The Dialects of Skye and Ross-shire'' published by the Norwegian University Press *1956 Magne Oftedal ''The Gaelic of Leurbost, Isle of Lewis'' published by the Norsk Tidskrift for Sprogvidenskap *1957 Nils Holmer ''The Gaelic of Kintyre'' published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies *1962 Nils Holmer ''The Gaelic of Arran'' published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies *1966 Gordon MacGillFhinnein ''Gàidhlig Uibhist a Deas'' ("South Uist Gaelic") published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies *1973 Elmar Ternes ''The Phonemic Analysis of Scottish Gaelic'' (focussing on Applecross Gaelic) published by the Helmut Buske Verlag *1978 Nancy Dorian ''East Sutherland Gaelic'' published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies *1989 Máirtín Ó Murchú ''East Perthshire Gaelic'' published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies In the period between 1950 to 1963, fieldwork was carried out to document all then remaining Gaelic dialects, culminating in the publication of the five-volume ''Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland'' by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1997. The survey collected data from informants as far south as Arran, Cowal, Brig o' Turk, east to Blairgowrie, Braemar and Grantown-on-Spey, north-east to Dunbeath and Portskerra and all areas west of these areas, including St Kilda. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Scottish Gaelic phonology」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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