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Linguistic Innovation Among Glasgow Gaelic New Speakers

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New Speakers of Minority Languages

Abstract

This chapter discusses new speakers of Scottish Gaelic in Glasgow. In particular, I focus on adolescent speakers in Gaelic immersion education and discuss their linguistic behaviour within the wider context of the revitalisation of Gaelic. Three phonetic features are considered in detail: tone and intonation, vowels, and laterals. The speakers in this study produce these phonetic features in ways which differ from the traditional Highland and Island Gaelic communities, and are instead typically Glaswegian. I discuss the future development potential in this new way of speaking Gaelic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The data were auditory scaled to Bark (Traunmüller 1990) and normalised using Lobanov normalisation (Lobanov 1971).

  2. 2.

    There were significant interactions between Lewis young speakers and alveolar (β = 1.62, p < 0.001) and palatalised laterals (β = 1.88, p < 0.001), and interactions between Lewis older speakers and alveolar (β = 4.71, p < 0.001) and palatalised laterals (β = 4.70, p < 0.001).

  3. 3.

    ‘mar like’: literally ‘like’ (Gaelic) ‘like’ (English). The speaker uses a Gaelic literal translation of the English discourse marker ‘like’ and then uses the English discourse marker ‘like’ as well.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Claire Nance

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  1. Claire Nance
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  1. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Cassie Smith-Christmas

  2. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Noel P. Ó Murchadha

  3. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Michael Hornsby

  4. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Máiréad Moriarty

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Nance, C. (2018). Linguistic Innovation Among Glasgow Gaelic New Speakers. In: Smith-Christmas, C., Ó Murchadha, N., Hornsby, M., Moriarty, M. (eds) New Speakers of Minority Languages. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57558-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57558-6_11

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