Canadian raising

Canadian raising according to the vowel chart in Rogers (2000:124).

Canadian raising is an allophonic rule of phonology in many dialects of North American English that changes the pronunciation of diphthongs with open-vowel starting points. Most commonly, the shift affects /aɪ/ or /aʊ/, or both, when they are pronounced before voiceless consonants (therefore, in words like price and clout, respectively, but not in prize and cloud). In North American English, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ usually begin in an open vowel [ä~a], but through raising they shift to [ɐ], [ʌ], or sometimes even [ɜ] or [ə]. Canadian English often has raising in words with both /aɪ/ (height, life, psych, type, etc.) and /aʊ/ (clout, house, south, scout, etc.), while most dialects of U.S. English have raising only in /aɪ/ if at all.

In the U.S., a boot [əˈbut], an exaggerated version of the raised pronunciation of about [əˈbɐʊt~əˈbəʊt], is a stereotype of Canadian English.^[1]

Although the symbol ⟨ʌ⟩ is defined as an open-mid back unrounded vowel in the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨ʌɪ⟩ or ⟨ʌʊ⟩ may signify any raised vowel that contrasts with unraised /aɪ/ or /aʊ/, when the exact quality of the raised vowel is not important in the given context.

Description

	Examples of Canadian raising in American English rider, writer [ɹaɪɾɚ] without raising, [ɹɐɪɾɚ] with it high school [ˈhɐɪ.skuɫ] "secondary school" with raising, [ˈhaɪˌskuɫ] "school that is high up" without it bowed, bout [ˈbaʊd] without raising, [ˈbəʊt] with it about, a boot, a boat [əˈbɐʊt] with raising, compared with oo in [əˈbut] and oh in [əˈbɤʊt]
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Phonetic environment

In general, Canadian raising affects vowels before voiceless consonants like /f/, /θ/, /t/, and /s/. Vowels before voiced consonants like /v/, /ð/, /d/, and /z/ are usually not raised.

However, several studies indicate that this rule is not completely accurate, and have attempted to formulate different rules.

A study of three speakers in Meaford, Ontario showed that pronunciation of the diphthong /aɪ/ fell on a continuum between raised and unraised. Raising is influenced by voicing of the following consonant, but it also appears to be influenced by the sound before the diphthong. Frequently the diphthong was raised when it is preceded by a coronal: in gigantic, dinosaur, and Siberia.^[2]

Raising may also be influenced by what that same study calls "biphone neighborhoods." So if a given speaker pronounces fight as [fʌɪt], then other words beginning with the sequence /faɪ/, e.g., fine, file, may also come to have a diphthong with a raised first element in that speaker's idiolect. Fight would then be the "neighborhood anchor" of the /faɪ/ biphone neighborhood. A word might become the neighborhood anchor due to its frequency or for some other reason.^[3]

Raising before /r/, as in wire, iris, and fire, has been documented in some American accents.^[4]

Raising of /aɪ/ before voiced consonants is particularly advanced in the Inland North, North-Central, and Philadelphia dialect areas. It has been noted to occur before [d], [ɡ] and [n] especially. Hence, words like tiny, spider, cider, tiger, dinosaur, cyber-, beside, idle (but sometimes not idol), and fire may contain a raised nucleus. (Also note that in six of those nine words, /aɪ/ is preceded by a coronal consonant; see above paragraph. In five [or possibly six] of those nine words, the syllable after the syllable with /aɪ/ contains a liquid.) The use of [ʌɪ] rather than [aɪ] in such words is unpredictable from phonetic environment alone, though it may have to do with their acoustic similarity to other words that do contain [ʌɪ] before a voiceless consonant, per the traditional Canadian-raising system. Hence, some researchers have argued that there has been a phonemic split in these dialects; the distribution of the two sounds is becoming more unpredictable among younger speakers.^[5]

Raising can apply to compound words. Hence, the first vowel in high school [ˈhʌɪskul] as a term meaning "a secondary school for students approximately 14–18 years old" may be raised, whereas high school [ˌhaɪ ˈskul] with the literal meaning of "a school that is high (e.g. in elevation)" is unaffected. (The two terms are also distinguished by the position of the stress accent, as shown.) The same is true of "high chair".^[6]

However, frequently it does not. One study of speakers in Rochester, New York and Minnesota found a very inconsistent pattern of /aɪ/ raising before voiceless consonants in certain prefixes; for example, the numerical prefix bi- was raised in bicycle but not bisexual or bifocals. Likewise, the vowel was consistently kept low when used in a prefix in words like dichotomy and anti-Semitic. This pattern may have to do with stress or familiarity of the word to the speaker; however, these relations are still inconsistent.^[7]

In most dialects of North American English, intervocalic /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as an alveolar flap [ɾ] when the following vowel is unstressed or word-initial, a phenomenon known as flapping. In accents with both flapping and Canadian raising, /aɪ/ or /aʊ/ before a flapped /t/ may still be raised, even though the flap is a voiced consonant. Hence, while in accents without raising, writer and rider are pronounced identically except for a slight difference in vowel length due to pre-fortis clipping, in accents with raising, the words may be distinguished by their vowels: writer [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ], rider [ˈɹaɪɾɚ].^[8]

Result

The raised variant of /aɪ/ typically becomes [ɐɪ], while the raised variant of /aʊ/ varies by dialect, with [ɐʊ~ʌʊ] more common in Western Canada and a fronted variant [ɜʊ~ɛʊ] commonly heard in Central Canada.^[1] In any case, the open vowel component of the diphthongs changes to an open-mid to mid vowel ([ʌ], [ɐ], [ɛ] or [ə]).

Geographic distribution

Despite its name, Canadian raising is not restricted to Canada.

Raising of both /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ is common in eastern New England, for example in Boston,^[9] as well as in the Upper Midwest. South Atlantic English and the accents of England's Fens feature it as well.

Raising of just /aɪ/ is found throughout the United States, and so may be considered an increasingly common General American characteristic, with the only major exception in the U.S. being in the South. There is considerable variation in this one type of Canadian raising's application and phonetic effects in the U.S., where it is believed to have spread from the North, and so most prominently includes the English of Northern U.S. regions like New England, the Inland North, and Philadelphia.^[9][10] It also appears in Western American (including California) English. Even some speakers in the South undergo this form of Canadian raising, though, more commonly, Southern American English (as well as African American Vernacular and Afro-Bahamian English) demonstrates a distinct but related phenomenon that splits /aɪ/ by retaining the glide before voiceless consonants and weakening the glide elsewhere. The raising of /aɪ/ is also present in Ulster English, spoken in the northern region of the island of Ireland, in which /aɪ/ is split between the sound [ä(ː)e] (before voiced consonants or in final position) and the sound [ɛɪ~ɜɪ] (before voiceless consonants but also sometimes in any position); phonologist Raymond Hickey has described this Ulster raising as "embryonically the situation" for Canadian raising.^[11]

There are also Canadians who raise only /aɪ/ but not /aʊ/, or vice versa.

See also

• Canadian Shift
• North American English regional phonology

Notes

Bibliography