Books by Raymond Hickey

The Sound Structure of Modern Irish contains a comprehensive description of the phonology of Irish. Based on the main forms of the language, it offers an analysis of the segments and the processes in its sound system. Each section begins with a description of the area of phonology which is the subject - such as stress patterns, phonotactics, epenthesis or metathesis - and then proceeds to consider the special aspects of this subject from a theoretical and typological perspective.The book pays particular attention to key processes in the sound system of modern Irish. The two most important of these are palatalisation and initial mutation, phenomena which are central to Irish and the analysis of which has consequences for general phonological theory.The other main emphasis in the book is on a typological comparison of several different languages, all of which show palatalisation and/or initial mutation as part of their systems. The different forms of Celtic, Slavic languages, Romance dialects and languages along with languages such as Finnish, Fula, Nivkh and Southern Paiute are considered to find out how processes which are phonetic in origin (external sandhi) can become functionalised and integrated into the morphosyntactic system of a language.

The book offers a comprehensive overview of forms of modern Irish within a general linguistic framework. Starting with information on the sociolinguistics of modern Irish and on the overall sound system of the language, it then proceeds with a tripartite division of the present-day language into northern, western and southern Irish. It gives specific information on the features of each dialect and considers many sub-divisions, using maps and tables to illustrate clearly what is the subject of discussion. There are several innovations in the book, such as a system of lexical sets which facilitate the description and analysis of variation and change in modern Irish. The data for the book stems from recordings of more than 200 speakers and all the statements made about the structure of Irish are based on native speakers' speech samples. These are supplied online with a software interface which allows users to quickly orient themselves among the varieties of Irish via clickable maps. A number of further issues are focused on in the book, such as the possibility of dialect reconstruction and the use of place-name evidence for determining the earlier distribution of Irish. Additional historical and background information is provided so that scholars and students without any previous knowledge of the language can readily grasp the themes and issues discussed.