Originally published in 1906, this study by E. C. Quiggin was, as its author put it, 'the first serious attempt at a scientific description of a northern dialect of Irish'. Quiggin maintained that collecting linguistic data from the people who were born before the famine was of immediate concern because their particular grasp of the vernacular would help shed much-needed light on the mysteries of Old and Middle Irish orthography. Drawn primarily from evidence of the speech found in a hamlet called Meenawannia near Donegal, this volume represents a fascinating case study of the Irish language at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Contents
Introductory; Part I. The Vowel System: 1. The back vowels; 2. The front vowels; 3. The irrational vowels; 4. The dipthongs; 5. Nasal vowels; Part II. The Consonants: 1. h, j, w; 2. The liquids and nasals; 3. The spirants; 4. The labial, dental and guttural stops; Part III. Synthesis: 1. Notes on the consonants; 2. Metathesis; 3. Dissimulation; 4. Loss of consonant; 5. Loss of vowel; 6. Vowel-shortening; 7. Uncertainty of initial; 8. Sandhi; 9. Vowel-length; 10. Stress; 11. Stress of compounds; 12. Sentence-stress; 13. Intonation; 14. Characteristics of Donegal Irish; Word lists; Texts; Notes on the texts.
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