Scottish Gaelic dialectology: A preliminary assessment of the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland

This essay outlines the current state of Scottish Gaelic dialect study, with a focus on the contributions of the published Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland [Ó Dochartaigh, C. (Ed.), 1994-1997. Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 5 vols. Dublin] and the archival resources upon which that publication is based. Although the SGDS provides a wealth of transcribed phonetic detail, there is still an urgent need for information on lexical, morphological, and syntactic variation in Scottish Gaelic. In addition it is proposed that the Survey's extensive archives, held at Edinburgh University, from the foundation for a concerted and on-going effort at assembling a larger archival resource on contemporary Scottish Gaelic dialect data for future analytic work, with a view to developing a searchable electronic archive.