Deileadh an Uà: St Kilda Gaelic Liquids and Surface Underspecification

Old Irish had a symmetrical system of laterals and rhotics (and nasals), with each class containing four members distinguished by velarised-palatalised and fortis-lenis contrasts. These are often transcribed as e.g. /L l L´ l´/, where ‘´’ indicates ‘palatalised’ and capitalisation ‘fortis’. The ‘Classical’ system is still reflected in spelling, but dialectological enquiry has shown that it had eroded into one of a three-way contrast in the vernacular of most areas – and even further on the periphery – by the 19th century. My research investigates the diachronic and ‘synchronic’ phonology of liquids in the under-studied, peripheral area of St Kilda, utilising phonetic data from the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland and archive recordings of connected speech. My findings confirm the previously described vocalisation of merged /L/ and /l/ in all environments. Whether this is still an abstract lateral remains unclear. The only surface lateral is palatal(ised) – underlyingly the result of a merger of /L´/ and /l´/. The only ‘fortis’ rhotic preserved is /R/, word-initially. /r/ mostly surfaces either plain or palatalised – other segments are inconsistently found, but I demonstrate these can be due to assimilation on the phonetic level. /r´/ consistently surfaces palatalised, but also as a lateral for two speakers, including in different tokens of one word. Anna Bosch has previously proposed that /r´/ and /L´,l´/ are in free variation for some speakers. I oppose this view on the grounds that I find no evidence of historical /L´/ or /l´/ surfacing as rhotics. I instead posit that /r´/ is underspecified so that it can surface as any palatalised liquid, while /L´,l´/ is specified as lateral. I examine potential problems for this analysis before outlining possible formalisations of it. Finally, I overview of the evolution of St Kilda liquids from the ‘Classical’ system and their ‘synchronic’ phonology.