Belfast and Derry in Revolt: A New History of the Start of the Troubles

Abstract

that the second instalment is handled impartially and with the diligence of a trained historian. This would make for a more accurate and altogether more readable contribution to the historiography of Irish communism.

Output optimization in the Irish plural system

“…Short vowel reduction is a fairly old feature of the language, and occurs in all dialects (Thurneysen 1946: 29; O’Rahilly 1932: 110; Ó Sé 1989, and many others). However, in many Ulster (Northern) dialects of Irish, unstressed [ax] sequences do not undergo reduction to [əx] (Quiggin 1906: 9; O’Rahilly 1932: Chapter XIV; Ó Sé 1989: 167; Ó Dochartaigh 1987: Chapter 4; Ó Siadhail 1991: 33, etc.). The same pattern of (non-)reduction occurs in Achill Irish (9).…”

“…Quiggin 1906: 5–17), there is in fact phonetic evidence for a surface distinction between. Descriptive sources for West Ulster Irish often transcribe unstressed as long or half-long [a˙] (Wagner 1959: 88–91; Sommerfelt 1922: 122–123; Wagner 1969; Ó Dochartaigh 1987: Chs. 2, 4) [12] .…”

“…For Achill Irish (9) the shortening of unstressed actually depends on phrasal position, giving rise to overt alternations like coileán [ˈkɨ.l j ɑn ] ‘pup’ (Stockman 1974: 310). The sequence [ax], in contrast, is consistently transcribed with a short [a] (Stockman 1974: 307–308; Ó Dochartaigh 1987: Chapter 4).…”

“…SeeWagner (1969:Vol. III, p.272),Stockman (1974),Ó Dochartaigh (1978Ó Dochartaigh ( , 1987,Hickey (2011:123), among others.References of the form 'W V P:I' refer toWagner (1969) Linguistic atlas and survey of Irish dialects. 'V' is the volume number, 'P' the dialect code (point number), and 'I' the number(s) corresponding to the survey item(s).4 These forms are from Conamara (Western) dialects, as I have been unable to find attestations of the plural forms of these stems in other dialects.…”

“…Also of interest is the fact that the loss of coda /x/ in some Northern Irish dialects has led to compensatory lengthening of preceding vowels(Ó Dochartaigh 1987, Kavitskaya 2002.…”