"Canadian" raising in the Northern Midwest of the United States

Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain

Fri. 4:25-5:40 A

Chambers (1973: 114) defines Canadian raising as a phenomenon that occurs in Canada which heightens the onset of the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ relative to the low-central onset in neighboring dialects, raising them to [[[radical]]i] and [[[radical]]u]. Some studies have indicated that young people in Canada often front the /au/diphthong and/or fail to raise it (Hung et al. 1993; Chambers 1981a); Chambers (1981b) suggests that this may have something to do with U.S. cultural domination of Canada. Vance's (1987) study of /ai/-raising in five speakers from New York and Minnesota indicates that raising is quite widespread in the U.S. as well, although he does find that only /ai/-raising, not /au/-raising, is common. Evidence from dialect atlases, however, indicates that some speakers from Minnesota, upstate New York, and Michigan raise /au/ (Kurath and McDavid 1961; Allen 1989). This paper will provide empirical data from a small city in Michigan about the distribution of both /ai/-raising and /au/-raising in the northern midwest of the United States.

Thirty informants, fifteen men and fifteen women ranging in age from fourteen to sixty-nine, participated in this study. All had grown up in the Michigan town in which the study took place. Each informant engaged in a half hour of informal conversation, and then read a list of 161 words, about half of which contained /ai/-tokens and about half of which contained /au/-tokens. The words had been chosen to elicit /ai/ and /au/ in a large variety of phonological contexts.

Both /ai/-raising and /au/-raising occurred, but /ai/-raising was much more frequent. The raising of /ai/ also occurred in several phonological contexts "forbidden" by the original rule laid out in Chambers (1973:127). The speaker variables of age and gender had a statistically significant effect, although the effect of speech style was not significant. The raising of /ai/ was distributed fairly evenly throughout the sample with regard to age, but /au/-raising seemed to be led by young women. Also interesting is an indication that with regard to the /au/ diphthong, when the onset was raised, it was also often fronted. This is similar to the findings of several Canadian studies (Chambers 1981a; Hung et al. 1993).

The evidence suggests hat while the raising of /ai/ has been fully-entrenched in the phonological system of this U.S. town for some time, /au/-raising is a comparatively new, and separate, change in progress. The fronting that often accompanies raising in this U.S. study also adds a new twist to similar studies in Canada, in that it suggests that the Canadians may not be conforming to the U.S. norm, but instead that the two varieties may be converging.

References

Allen, Harold B. 1980. Canadian raising in the upper midwest. In: American speech, 64(1): 74-75.

Chambers, J.K. 1973. Canadian raising. In: Canadian journal of linguistics, 18.2; 113-135.

________. 1981 (a). Linguistic variation and Chomsky's 'homogeneous speech community'. In: Papers from the fourth annual meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, ed. by A.M. Kinloch. University of New Brunswick.

_______. 1981 (b). The Americanization of Canadian raising. In: Papers from the parasession on language and behavior: Chicago linguistic society, ed. by Carrie S. Masek, Roberta A. Hendrick, and Mary Frances Miller: 20-35. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Hung, Henrietta, John Davision and J.K. Chambers. 1993. Comparative sociolinguistics of /aw/-fronting. In: Focus on Canada, ed. by Sandra Clarke: 247-267. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Kurath, Hans and R.I. McDavid, Jr. 1961. The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Vance, Timothy J. 1987. "Canadian raising" in some dialects of the northern United States. In: American speech, 62.3: 195-210.