A Distinguished Faculty Lecture Presented by Stevenson College,the Linguistics Department,and the Institute for Humanities Research.

Irish, one of the Celtic languages, is a minority language in Ireland, with some features that are rare among the world’s languages. We’ll look at these striking properties of the Irish sound system. However, we’ll also see ways in which Irish reflects deep truths about all linguistic sound systems. This will include considering how the language’s status as a minority language in a largely English- speaking country may be permanently altering its sound system. Along the way we’ll learn about using ultrasound and perceptual experiments to study sound systems.