Instrumental and Experimental Analysis of Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig; gla) Sound Structures

多达2000万美国人声称自己是苏格兰或苏格兰/爱尔兰血统。这个社区的主要遗产语言之一是苏格兰盖尔语。这种语言是文学、歌曲、诗歌、历史和土著知识体系等丰富文化的媒介。它还提供了一个重要的窗口，进入世界观和苏格兰裔美国人社区的祖先的文化。不幸的是，苏格兰盖尔语正处于严重濒危状态。在苏格兰，没有只会说一种语言的人，在过去的30年里，每天使用这种语言的人减少了三分之一以上。按照这种速度，这种语言在一代人的时间内将不再可行。我们对如此多苏格兰人和苏格兰裔美国人的文化和背景的理解可能会失去，这是非常令人担忧的。苏格兰盖尔语也是研究语言结构的语言学家感兴趣的语言。盖尔语的语音系统与英语的语音系统有很大的不同。它有特殊的声音和声音组合模式，在世界语言中是罕见或独特的。因为语言学家试图理解语言的基本模式，所以有必要研究像苏格兰盖尔语这样的语言。苏格兰盖尔语使用者和科学语言学家的兴趣在这个领域交叉。为了让语言学家正确理解一种语言的语音系统，他们必须使用工具测量说话者如何发出声音，并使用心理语言学实验来测量说话者如何理解和使用声音模式。英语和西班牙语等常用语言的模式已经得到了相对较好的研究，但较少使用的语言的声音系统，如盖尔语，很少涉及。另一方面，对于语言的使用者来说，建立一个稳定的语言社区的第一步是在美国和苏格兰开发语言教学材料，供社区使用。运用现代语言学、工具和心理语言学技术。教授安德鲁·卡尼、迈克·哈蒙德、戴安娜·阿尔奇格利和娜塔莎·华纳沿着以及苏格兰盖尔语母语者穆里尔·费舍尔将研究盖尔语声音系统某些独特特性的发音、模式和感知。例如，使用放置在下巴下的超声波，他们将测量舌头在某些辅音和元音发音时的位置。同样，他们会要求说话者戴着一个特殊的面具说话，这个面具可以测量有多少空气通过他们的鼻子和嘴巴。这项研究的结果将是对盖尔语语音结构的描述，这将有助于完成对该语言的持续描述。此外，在这项研究中，研究生将接受濒危语言声音分析技术的培训。这项培训将使学生能够对其他濒危遗产语言进行类似的工作。这项工作对记录和保存苏格兰和苏格兰裔美国人社区的语言传统具有重要意义。

As many as 20 million Americans claim to be of Scottish or Scots/Irish descent. One of the primary heritage languages of this community is Scottish Gaelic. This language is the medium for a rich culture of literature, song, poetry, history and indigenous knowledge-systems. It also provides an important window into the world-view and culture of the ancestors of the Scottish-American community. Sadly, the Scottish Gaelic language is severely endangered. There are no monolingual speakers and, in Scotland, the number of speakers who use the language everyday has dropped more than a third in the past 30 years. At this rate, the language will no longer be viable within a generation. The potential loss to our understanding of the culture and background of so many Scots and Scottish Americans is of great concern. The Scottish Gaelic language is also of interest to linguists who study the structure of language. The sound system of Gaelic is very different from that of English. It has particular sounds and patterns of sound combinations that are rare or unique in the world's languages. Because linguists seek to understand the fundamental patterns that hold of languages in general it is necessary to look to languages like Scottish Gaelic.The interests of Scottish Gaelic speakers and scientific linguists intersect in this domain. In order for linguists to properly understand the sound system of a language, they have to use instrumental measures of how speakers articulate sounds and use psycholinguistic experiments to measure how speakers understand and use the patterns of sounds. The patterns in commonly spoken languages like English and Spanish has been relatively well studied but the sound systems of lesser spoken languages with rare sounds, such as Gaelic, are less often addressed. On the other side of the coin, for the speakers of the language, one of the first steps towards building a stable linguistic community is to develop language teaching materials in and about the language for use by the community, both in the USA and in Scotland. Using modern linguistic instrumental and psycholinguistic techniques. Profs. Andrew Carnie, Mike Hammond, Diana Archangeli and Natasha Warner along with Scottish Gaelic native speaker Muriel Fisher will investigate the articulation, patterning and perception of certain unique properties of the Gaelic sound system. For example, using an ultrasound placed under the chin, they will measure the position of the tongue during the pronunciation of certain consonants and vowels. Similarly, they will ask speakers to speak while wearing a special mask that measures how much air is coming through their nose and mouth. The output of this research will be a description of the Gaelic sounds structures which will help complete an on-going description of the language. In addition, in doing this research graduate students will be trained in the techniques of sound analysis of an endangered language. This training will allow the students to do similar work on other endangered heritage languages. This work has important implications for documenting and preserving the linguistic traditions of the Scottish and Scottish-American communities.