A Treatise on the Provincial Dialect of Scotland

This book is a record of the speech habits (and their social consequences) of the Scottish and English upper classes in the 18th century. Written as a pronouncing dictionary and phonological description of contemporary prestigious London pronunciation and polite Scottish English, it was never published at the time. This is the first edition of the “Treatise” and is a guide to the state of English phonology and its social and regional variations in the late 18th century. In the introduction, Charles Jones provides a full biography of Sylvester Douglas and attempts to place his work in the context of 18th-century phonological study. Full and detailed examples of the principal characteristics of the period’s phonology are given and there are comprehensive footnotes on the “Treatise” itself throughout the text.