Vowel length

An important aspect of Scottish vowels is vowel length. The Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR, also called ‘Aitken’s Law’) refers to the phenomenon whereby vow- els are phonetically long in certain environments: before voiced fricatives, before /r/, and before a boundary, including a morpheme boundary. Thus the vowels in breathe, beer, bee, and agreed are longer than in brief, bead, and greed. In diphthongs, e.g. PRICE/PRIZE (BITE/TRY), the SVLR manifests itself in quantity and quality differences which may be phonemic in Scots, e.g. aye [ae], ay [əi] . In the refined accents of ScStE, such as ‘Kelvinside’ (Glasgow) and ‘Morningside’ (Edinburgh), these diphthongs can be merged stereotypically as [ae] and show a raised first vowel followed by a reduced second vowel (Johnston 1985: 39, 1997: 493). The SVLR still operates in most varieties of Scots and in Scottish English in general, though it appears to be receding in some middle-class speakers in Edinburgh and in children of English-born parents (Jones 2002: 78). Recent accounts of the SVLR based on durational data conclude that the monophthongs /i, u/ and the diphthong /ai/ alone are subject to the SVLR.