Vowel Duration Patterns in Scottish English: The Scottish Vowel Length Rule in the 21st Century

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Andreas J. Weilinghoff (Junior Professor of English Linguistics, University of Koblenz, Germany)

Vowel Duration Patterns in Scottish English

The Scottish Vowel Length Rule in the 21st Century

Andreas J. Weilinghoff (Junior Professor of English Linguistics, University of Koblenz, Germany)

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English

Edinburgh University Press
31 December 2025

Sociolinguistics; Phonetics, phonology; Computational linguistics

The Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR) is a special feature of Scottish English phonology and is said to contrast with the Voicing Effect (VE), the vowel timing pattern found in most other varieties of English.

In this in-depth work, Andreas Weilinghoff employs some of the latest speech technology as well as advanced methods in inferential statistics to reveal not only the complex patterns of vowel duration in Scottish English but also how quantity patterns observed in production experiments change in naturally occurring speech. This book brings together different disciplinary areas from Scottish English studies, Sociophonetics to Corpus Linguistics and Computational Linguistics.

By: Andreas J. Weilinghoff (Junior Professor of English Linguistics University of Koblenz Germany)
Imprint: Edinburgh University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781399541978
ISBN 10: 1399541978
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 31 December 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

List of Abbreviations List of other symbols Acknowledgments Introduction: Scotland, Scottish English, Scots and SSE – a unique situation in the anglophone world. 1.1 Scottish Gaelic 1.2 Scots 1.3 (Scottish Standard) English 1.4 The relationship between Scots and (Scottish Standard) English 2. Vowel duration in English: Scotland and beyond. 2.1 Aitken’s Law and the VE 2.2 Segmental factors 2.3 Suprasegmental factors 2.4 Summary 3. Methodology: Investigating vowel duration in the 21st century 3.1 The sample. 3.2 Data preparation 3.2.1 Data preparation of ICE Scotland 3.2.2 Data preparation of self-collected datasets 3.3 Data analysis 3.3.1 Vowel selection 3.3.2 Variable selection 3.3.3 Statistical analysis 3.4 Summary 4. Findings: Vowel overview 4.1 Summary 5. Findings: The short monophthongs of contemporary Scottish Standard English 5.1 KIT 5.2 STRUT 5.3 DRESS 5.4 Summary 6. Findings: The long monophthongs of contemporary Scottish Standard English 6.1 GOOSE 6.2 FLEECE 6.3 THOUGHT 6.4 FACE 6.5 GOAT 6.6 CAT 6.7 Summary 7. Findings: The diphthongs of contemporary Scottish Standard English 7.1 MOUTH 7.2 PRICE 7.3 CHOICE 7.4 Summary 8. Widening the perspective on Scottish vowel duration patterns 8.1 Aitken’s Law and the VE in 21st century spoken SSE 8.2 Sociolinguistic variation 8.3 The influence of prosodic factors Conclusion: Aitken's Law in Contemporary Scotland: Current Findings and Future Directions References

Andreas Weilinghoff is junior professor of English linguistics in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Koblenz, Germany. His research is primarily quantitative and empirical, focusing on Scottish English, phonetics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics and corpus linguistics.