Canadian raising Totally Explained

Everything about Canadian Raising totally explained

Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants (for example, /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, /f/). (the vowel of "eye") becomes [ʌj], while the outcome of /aʊ/ (the vowel of "loud") varies by dialect, with [ʌw] more common in the west and a fronted variant [ɛʉ] commonly heard in Central Canada. In any case, the /a/ component of the diphthong changes from a low vowel to a mid vowel or else a back vowel ([ʌ] or [ɛ]). As [əʊ] is an allophone of /oʊ/ (as in "road") in many other dialects, the Canadian pronunciation of "about the house" may sound like "a boat the hoce" to non-Canadians. Some stand-up and situation comedians exaggerate this to "oot and aboot" for comic effect. It is important that these exaggerated pronunciations, such as "a boat the hoas", are usually only apparent to people without Canadian raising. They represent an attempt to imperfectly approximate the sounds they hear with sounds available in their own dialects. Because this approximation is imperfect, individuals who do speak with Canadian raising will frequently be baffled by reports that they're being perceived as saying "aboot".

Geographic distribution of Canadian raising

Despite its name, the phenomenon isn't restricted to Canada; it's quite common in New England, Minnesota, Upper Michigan, and other upper Midwestern states, and has been reported in the traditional accent of Martha's Vineyard, as well as in Southern Atlantic varieties of English and in the Fens in England. True Canadian raising affects both the /aʊ/ and /aɪ/ diphthongs, but a related phenomenon, of much wider distribution throughout the United States, affects only the /aɪ/ diphthong. So, whereas the General American pronunciations of "rider" and "writer" are identical [ɹaɪɾɚ], those whose dialects include either the full or restricted Canadian raising will pronounce them as [ɹaɪɾɚ] and [ɹʌɪɾɚ], respectively. (In British English, these words would be pronounced [ɹaɪdə] and [ɹaɪtə], respectively.) This raising of /aɪ/ can be found in the Pacific Northwest, New England, and Philadelphia, and probably in many other parts of the country as well, as it appears to be spreading. Note also that this phenomenon preserves the recoverability of the phoneme /t/ in "writer" despite the North American English process of flapping, which merges /t/ and /d/ into [ɾ] before unstressed vowels.

Varieties of Canadian raising

Note that, for many speakers, Canadian raising applies not only before voiceless consonants, but more generally in a non-final syllable of a morpheme. This is sensitive to morpheme boundaries in a word. For such speakers, "rider" and "spider" don't rhyme, since the former has a morpheme boundary before the "-er", and hence the voiced /d/ inhibits raising, whereas the latter has no such boundary, and hence raising can apply freely in a non-morpheme-final syllable. Similarly, "pilot" and "pile it" may be non-homophonous, since the former has a raised diphthong (due to its being in a non-morpheme-final syllable) while the latter has a normal, non-raised diphthong -- although in such circumstances (before resonant consonants, it seems), the raising may be optional for some speakers. There are many other dialect-specific complexities: For example, even the speakers just described, for whom "rider" and "spider" don't rhyme, may differ on whether raising applies in "hydrogen", although unquestionably it does apply to "nitrogen".

Possible origins

The phenomenon of Canadian raising may be related historically to a similar phenomenon that exists in Scots and Scottish English. The Scottish Vowel Length Rule lengthens a wide variety of vowel sounds in several environments, and shortens them in others; "long" environments include when the vowel precedes a number of voiced consonant sounds. This rule also conditions /aɪ/ in the long environments and /əɪ/ in the short environments. Significantly, though, the Scots Vowel Length Rule applies only before voiced fricatives and /r/, whereas Canadian raising isn't limited in this fashion; thus, it may represent a sort of merging of the Scots Vowel Length Rule with the general English rule lengthening vowels before voiced consonants of any sort.
The most common understanding of the Great Vowel Shift is that the Middle English vowels [iː,uː] passed through a stage [əɪ,əʊ] on the way to their modern pronunciations [aɪ,aʊ]. Thus it's difficult to say whether Canadian raising reflects an innovation or the preservation of an older vowel quality in a restricted environment.

Bibliography

Chambers, J. K. "Canadian raising". Canadian Journal of Linguistics 18.2 (1973): 113–35.
Dailey-O'Cain, J. "Canadian raising in a midwestern U.S. city". Language Variation and Change 9,1 (1997): 107-120.
Labov, W. "The social motivation of a sound change". Word 19 (1963): 273–309.
Wells, J. C. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Canadian Raising'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://canadian_raising.totallyexplained.com">Canadian raising Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.