‘Pitch accent’ and prosodic structure in Scottish Gaelic

Historical implications

I consider the nature of the so-called ‘pitch accents’ in Scottish Gaelic and argue that the contrast is one of metrical structure rather than lexical tone, at least diachronically, and probably also synchronically. This means that they can be reconstructed with an internal origin, and no recourse to contact with North Germanic is necessary to account for their appearance. The paper has the analysis in detail, and the historical argument is expounded in some detail in later talks here and here.

← Explaning licensing mismatches in Welsh

|  All presentations  |

Laryngeal realism revisited →