The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland (3 Volumes) : Scots Section

This work is a reissue of the three volumes of the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland, first published in 1975, 1977 and 1985 respectively. The volumes offer a thorough and comprehensive dialectological study of Lowland Scotland, Orkney and Shetland, Northern Ireland, Northumberland and Cumberland, providing a wealth of word-geographical material and phonological findings assembled over more than 20 years, alongside a detailed cartographic analysis of Scottish dialects by the Linguistic Survey of Scotland.

Volumes 1 and 2 offer a comprehensive selection of word-geographical material, offering the Scots equivalent of a selection of English words, presented on a county by county basis. 

Volume 1 also includes an introduction which covers:

• the concept of linguistic geography and historical development of linguistic reflection in Scotland in both the written and oral tradition
• the new approach in Scottish phonetics and dialectology which began in the second half of the nineteenth century
• the origins and approaches of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland
• the role of the questionnaire in the creation the Linguistic Atlas
• and a valuable and detailed introduction to the maps and lists of word-geographical material which make up these two volumes.

 Maps within this collection show:

• the physical structure of the Scots and Gaelic-speaking areas covered
• The National grid and grid of Northern Ireland enabling the reader to locate each informant
• population density of each region

Volume 3 presents the phonological investigation of Scots dialect speech, providing the first large-scale presentation of a phonological survey along functional lines, that is, by means of a technique of contrasts and oppositions of the stressed vowels of the recorded speech-sounds.