22-693: The Scottish vowel length rule (also known as Aitken's law after A. J. Aitken , the Scottish linguist who formulated it) describes how vowel length in Scots , Scottish English , and, to some extent, Ulster English and Geordie is conditioned by the phonetic environment of the target vowel . Primarily, the rule is that certain vowels (described below) are phonetically long in the following environments: Exceptions can also exist for particular vowel phonemes, dialects, words, etc., some of which are discussed in greater detail below. The underlying phonemes of
44-412: A Scots dialect is from central Scotland, the more it will contain specific words that do not adhere to the rule. The Scottish Vowel Length Rule is assumed to have come into being between the early Middle Scots and late Middle Scots periods. Adam Jack Aitken Adam Jack Aitken (19 June 1921 – 11 February 1998) was a Scottish lexicographer and leading scholar of the Scots language . Aitken
66-615: A free online ezine (named after the short story by Robert Louis Stevenson ). Since June 2013, Scottish Literary Review has been included in Project MUSE 's Premium Collection of journals. Since 1971 ASLS has republished a number of out of print Scottish texts in their Annual Volumes series (45 volumes by 2016). Titles in the series include reprints of 18th- and 19th-century fiction, anthologies of Scottish drama, editions of poetry and collections of other writings. Two ASLS Annual Volumes have won Saltire Society Research Book of
88-505: A new reading programme that approximately doubled the list of works excerpted for the dictionary, correcting the bias towards verse and literary prose. Aitken's editorship began with the letter J, and the impact of the new reading programme is seen from the third volume onwards. Aitken was one of the first to appreciate the potential of the computer for research in the Arts. Although computer methods arrived too late to be of central importance in
110-465: A numbering system for the Scots vowels that enabled a better understanding and description of their historical development. He retired in 1986 and died on 11 February 1998 of ischaemia . Association for Scottish Literary Studies The Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS) is a Scottish educational charity , founded in 1970 to promote and support the teaching, study and writing of Scottish literature . Its founding members included
132-399: A university subject. The handouts that he produced in the 1950s for his courses on Scots language were for many years the only clear summaries of Scots vocabulary, phonology, orthography, grammar and stylistics, and they circulated widely amongst scholars. Over time he made much of this material available in print, and his writings largely form the foundation of the subject. He was chairman of
154-430: Is a member of Publishing Scotland . ASLS produces periodicals , including Scottish Literary Review (formerly Scottish Studies Review ), a peer reviewed journal of Scottish literature and cultural studies ; Scottish Language , a peer reviewed journal of Scottish languages and linguistics ; The International Journal of Scottish Literature , a free online peer reviewed journal (2006–2013); and The Bottle Imp ,
176-859: Is part-funded by Creative Scotland . The ASLS Occasional Papers series publishes essays and monographs on Scottish literary and linguistic topics, often based on papers presented at ASLS conferences . The most recent edition in this series, number 25, is entitled Christianity in Scottish Literature . ASLS publishes the Scotnotes series of study guides to Scottish writers and their literary works. There are currently thirty-nine titles in this series, on authors ranging from late medieval poets such as William Dunbar and Robert Henryson to contemporary writers such as Iain Banks , Liz Lochhead and Ian Rankin . In May 2010, in partnership with
198-580: The Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park , ASLS published an illustrated edition of Sir Walter Scott's narrative poem The Lady of the Lake , to mark the 200th anniversary of the original publication. In June 2011, with financial support from the Gaelic Books Council , ASLS published a new edition of Sorley MacLean 's An Cuilithionn/The Cuillin . In February 2013, ASLS hosted
220-959: The Scottish Writing Exhibition at the Modern Language Association of America 's annual conventions in the United States. In August 2008 the Scottish Writing Exhibition was on display at the biannual European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) conference in Aarhus in Denmark . A number of literary scholars have held the presidency of the ASLS: To date, two ASLS Annual Volumes have won Saltire Society Research Book of
242-904: The Language Committee of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies 1971–1976; chairman of the Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland 1978–1981 and honorary president from 1994; vice-president of the Scottish Text Society from 1985; Honorary Preses of the Scots Language Society from 1994; honorary vice-president of the Scottish National Dictionary Association from 1995; and honorary vice-president of
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#1732772737553264-828: The Long Eighteenth Century , and The International Companion to Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature . Since its first issue in 1983, many contemporary Scottish writers have had early work published in ASLS's annual anthology of new short fiction and poetry, New Writing Scotland , including Leila Aboulela , Lin Anderson , Iain Banks , Polly Clark , Anne Donovan , Janice Galloway , Kris Haddow , Jane Harris , Gail Honeyman , Kathleen Jamie , A L Kennedy , James Meek , Ian Rankin , James Robertson , Suhayl Saadi , Ali Smith , Chiew-Siah Tei , Irvine Welsh , and others. New Writing Scotland
286-884: The Robert Henryson Society from 1996. In 1981 the British Academy awarded him the Biennial Sir Israel Gollancz Prize . In 1983 he was awarded a DLitt by the University of Edinburgh, and was appointed honorary professor in 1984. In 1987, he was presented with a Festschrift: The Nuttis Schell, Essays on the Scots Language presented to A J Aitken. Aitken is well known for his formulation of the Scottish vowel length rule , also known as Aitken's law. He also developed
308-542: The Scottish literary scholar Matthew McDiarmid (1914–1996). Originally based at the University of Aberdeen , it moved to its current home within the University of Glasgow in 1996. In November 2015, ASLS was allocated £40,000 by the Scottish Government to support its work providing teacher training and classroom resources for schools. ASLS's main field of activity is publishing , and the organisation
330-693: The Scottish vowel system (that is, in both Scottish Standard English dialects and Scots dialects) are as follows: ★ = Vowels that definitively follow the Scottish Vowel Length Rule. The Scottish Vowel Length Rule affects all vowels except the always-short vowels 15 and 19 ( /ɪ/ and /ʌ/ ) and, in many Modern Scots varieties, the always-long Scots-only vowels 8, 11, and 12 (here transcribed as /eː/ , /iː/ and /ɔː/ ) that do not occur as phonemes separate from /e, i, ɔ/ in Scottish Standard English. The further north
352-933: The Year awards: The Poems of William Dunbar , edited by Priscilla Bawcutt (1998), and Sorley MacLean 's Dàin do Eimhir , edited by Christopher Whyte (2002). In 2015, ASLS launched the International Companions to Scottish Literature series, co-edited by Ian Brown and Thomas Owen Clancy . Titles in the series to date include The International Companion to Lewis Grassic Gibbon , The International Companion to Edwin Morgan , The International Companion to Scottish Poetry , The International Companion to James Macpherson and The Poems of Ossian , The International Companion to John Galt , The International Companion to Scottish Literature 1400–1650 , The International Companion to Scottish Literature of
374-509: The Year awards: The Poems of William Dunbar , edited by Priscilla Bawcutt (1998); and Sorley MacLean 's Dàin do Eimhir , edited by Christopher Whyte (2002). In 2011, the ASLS's edition of Sorley MacLean's An Cuilithionn/The Cuillin , edited by Christopher Whyte, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year award. Also in 2011, along with VisitScotland and the University of Glasgow,
396-575: The collection process for DOST, he set up, with Paul Bratley and Neil Hamilton-Smith, the Older Scots Textual Archive, a computer-readable archive of over one million words of Older Scots literature. For most of his career, up to 1979, Aitken combined his work on DOST with teaching, as a Lecturer and latterly Reader in the Department of English Language, University of Edinburgh. He can be said to have created 'Scots language' as
418-729: The inaugural Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship, set up by Creative Scotland "to enable a writer to take time out of their usual environment to embark upon a year-long literary adventure to develop their practice". Kirsty Logan was selected to be the first recipient of the Fellowship, and on 10 August 2015 ASLS published her collection of short stories A Portable Shelter . In June 2023, ASLS published two volumes of plays by Michel Tremblay , translated into Scots by Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay . From 2004 to 2019, ASLS mounted
440-665: Was able to continue his education thanks to a school bursary. As the son of a miner, he received further bursaries that allowed him to enter the University of Edinburgh in 1939. He served as a lance bombardier in the Royal Artillery during World War II in North Africa and Sicily. He took part in the Normandy landings landing at Port en Bessin D Day + 2, he drove to join 151 Brigade of the 50th Division beyond Bayeuk. He fought at Tilly sur Seulles and Villers Bocage. He
462-515: Was born on 19 June 1921 in Edinburgh , grew up in Bonnyrigg , Midlothian , and was educated at Lasswade High School . He was the only son and eldest of the three children of Adam Aitken, a miner, and his first wife Alexandrina Sutherland, who died when Jack was about nine. He suffered neglect as a step-child, but his minister, Rev. Oliver Dryer, helped him to leave home at the age of sixteen. He
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#1732772737553484-730: Was commended for bravery by Field Marshal Montgomery in 1944 during the campaign in France. He rose to the rank of Sergeant Major. He graduated MA with First Class Honours in English Language and Literature in 1947. In 1948 he was appointed Assistant to Sir William Craigie , the editor of the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and became editor of DOST on Craigie's retirement in 1956. When he took over editorial responsibility for DOST, Aitken instituted
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