Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Page 30

38 Dialect Research in Orkney and Shetland after Jakobsen
Phonology
The use of phonological systems by the Survey has been
emphasised in one or two places and is, perhaps, fairly
widely known.1) It is necessary to remember that in coun<
ting the number of stressed vowels in a given structural
position (say, before the consonant t), differences in distri=
bution over the vocabulary can nevertheless yield the same
inventory. This is saying no more than that diachronic
reflexes show themselves in the lexis and that synchronic
description simply counts the score.2) Thus, for example,
the inventory of the stressed vowels before t in the dialects
of North Ronaldsay and Deerness, in Orkney, is the same
(an lTvowel system), but in North Ronaldsay »fat« and
»fault« (»faut«) fall together and in Deerness they do not;
but in Deerness »bait« and »met« have the same vowel,
and in North Ronaldsay they do not. So the inventory
remains the same, but the distribution different. Never«
theless, the inventory is still a unifying mental counter.
The reason for this development of the use of phonological
systems is simply that accurate, constant and measurable
characterisation is required, especially for comparison of
dialects. Hans Kurath has spoken of the unequal value of
»phonemic, phonic, and incidental [sc. distributional] heteroí
glosses . . . in determining the degree of difference between
dialects and in evaluating the relative importance of the
boundaries between speechsareas«.3) Each of these can be
*) See especially Augus Mclntosh »Introduction to a Survey of
Scottish Dialects« pp. 56 £f. and J. C. Catford »Vowel Systems of Scots
Dialects« Trans. of the Philological Society 1957 p 107.
2) See W. G. Moulton, »The short vowel system of Northern Switzer-
land: a study in structural dialectology« Word 16 (1960) p. 175, and
cf. Ernst Pulgram, »Structural Comparison, Diasystems, and Dialectology«
IJnguistics 4 (1964) p. 70.
3) Hans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid Junr. »Pronunciation of
English in the Atlantic States«, p. 2. Recently P. L. Henry has suggested
that phonological criteria are »The most reliable and satisfying basis for