Strict Cyclicity, Structure Preservation and the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule

Abstract

The analysis of vowel length in Standard Scottish English (SSE) and Scots dialects has proved problematical for some time now. With most analyses the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule (SVLR) is taken to lengthen underlyingly short vowels, and the principal problem with this approach has been in giving a phonological characterization of the set of vowels which act as input to the rule. A complicating factor here is the fact that the set of input vowels seems to vary across dialects. A recent analysis by Anderson (to appear), couched in dependency-phonology (DP) representations which allow for non-specification, argues rather persuasively that SVLR is a shortening operation on underlyingly long vowels, thus resolving the problem of the phonological definition of the input set (for some dialects at least). It also goes some way towards dealing with variation across dialects by giving an explanation for the variable behaviour of the lower mid vowel [ↄ,], which participates in SVLR in some dialects but not in others.