The "classical" definition of Canadian Raising is that /aɪ/ becomes /əɪ/ before unvoiced consonants (and in some dialects, /aʊ/ > /əʊ/ as well). But the more I've thought about this, the more I've realized that my own dialect, as well as anecdotally many others, have a lot of examples that don't follow this rule.
For instance, IMD:
I have raising before voiced consonants in a few monomorphemic instances:
"tiger" ['təɪ.gr]
"spider" ['spəɪ.dr]
"hydro-" ['həi.droʊ]
I have raising before syllabic /r/ in many cases:
"tire" [təɪ.jr]
But not in others:
"spire" [spaɪ.jr]
"sire" [saɪ.jr]
And I make distinctions in things that 'should' be homophones:
"Meijer" [məɪ.jr] (a Midwestern hypermarket chain)
"Myer/mire" [maɪ.jr] (the name or the word)
And to make this even weirder, I apparently distinguish raised/unraised pairs when one is a noun and one is a verb:
"wire (noun)" [wəɪ.jr]
"wire (verb)" [waɪ.jr]
"hire (noun)" [həɪ.jr]
"hire (verb)" [haɪ.jr]
"fire (noun)" [fəɪ.jr]
"fire (verb)" [fai.jr]
(I just realized I do this weird noun/verb thing about two minutes ago, so it's not anything I consciously did...)
Looking at the Wikipedia talk page on Canadian raising, I saw a few quotes about what other people do before syllabic /r/:
For my part, I have noticed that my pronunciations of "fire" and "spire" do not rhyme. I apply "Canadian raising" to "fire" but not to "spire". This doesn't fit any of the cases described in the article. Am I atypical?
As for me, I apply raising in both fire and spire but not wire; I'm from Beverly, Massachusetts.
Both of these people are inconsistent with raising before /r/, but inconsistent in different ways. I seem to agree more with the first one.
Then, on top of all that, I raise the vowel in the word "house" to [həʊs], but I don't raise [aʊ] anywhere else. (As a result, I have another noun/verb pair with "houses (n)" [həʊzɪz] vs "houses (v)" [haʊzɪz]).
So for those of you with any sort of Canadian raising, does any of this seem familiar? What words do you raise or not raise before /r/? Anyone know what the heck is going on here in general?
Last edited by Mecislau on Sat Jul 31, 2010 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I have /aɪ/-raising in spider, tire, mire, wire (n&v), hire (n&v), fire (n&v), but not in tiger, hydro-, Myer, or higher. I'm not sure about sire and spire: I feel like I want to raise spire but not sire, but both still sound kind of weird either way.
Since I've lived in Texas my /aʊ/-raising has somehow evolved into a stressed-unstressed distinction, with unstressed /aʊ/ being raised and stressed /aʊ/ staying as [aʊ].
Phonetically, I think /aʊ/-raising in particular varies depending on where you are. In the west where I'm from it's [ʌʊ], and to me it seems like people from further east have something that sounds broader and more pronounced--my parents know a couple from Toronto who I'd swear have [ɛʊ].
I sometimes (in quick speech mostly) monophthongize /aɪ/ to /a:/ before voiced consonants, so the contrast with the raised /ʌɪ/ before unvoiced consonants can be more apparent. I'm American, so I don't have that raising for /aʊ/ (for me, [æʊ]).
I have
spider [spɜ̠eɾɚ]
fire [fɜ̠ejɚ]
spire [spaejɚ]~[spa:ɚ]
sire [saejɚ]~[sa:ɚ]
tire [tʰɜ̠ejɚ]
wire [waejɚ]~[wa:ɚ]
I guess it's raising before /r/ coming through lexical diffusion. Commoner words seem to have raising - except "wire", a word I say a lot but don't seem to have raising in.
Last edited by äreo on Mon Aug 09, 2010 10:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Colonel Cathcart wrote:my parents know a couple from Toronto who I'd swear have [ɛʊ].
I've heard this from a few Canadians before, but I don't know where they were from and they lived in Bermuda for most of the time anyway.
My friend from London, ON has /ɛʊ/.
I did have a bizarrely similar (to the original poster's) accident about four years ago, in which I slipped over a cookie and somehow twisted my ankle so far that it broke
What kind of cookie?
Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/
Mecislau wrote:The "classical" definition of Canadian Raising is that /aɪ/ becomes /əɪ/ before unvoiced consonants (and in some dialects, /aʊ/ > /əʊ/ as well). But the more I've thought about this, the more I've realized that my own dialect, as well as anecdotally many others, have a lot of examples that don't follow this rule.
Hi. I'm Canadian. I've got the raising of both /ai/ and /aʊ/, and also the one where /ɑr/ becomes something like /ʌr/ in certain environments (far as I can tell, it's before most consonants).
So for those of you with any sort of Canadian raising, does any of this seem familiar? What words do you raise or not raise before /r/? Anyone know what the heck is going on here in general?
Here's how your examples compare with what I've got:
For instance, IMD:
I have raising before voiced /d/ in a few monomorphemic instances:
"tiger" ['təɪ.gr]
"spider" ['spəɪ.dr]
"hydro-" ['həi.droʊ]
don't have; have ; have
I have raising before syllabic /r/ in many cases:
"tire" [təɪ.jr]
have this.
But not in others:
"spire" [spaɪ.jr]
"sire" [saɪ.jr]
I have the raised version in both of these. Fire does rhyme with spire and sire for me.
And I make distinctions in things that 'should' be homophones:
"Meijer" [məɪ.jr] (a Midwestern hypermarket chain)
"Myer/mire" [maɪ.jr] (the name or the word)
Yeah, I've got this as well. "liar" for example is not homophonous with "lyre" (though how often do you hear lyre).
And to make this even weirder, I apparently distinguish raised/unraised pairs when one is a noun and one is a verb:
"wire (noun)" [wəɪ.jr]
"wire (verb)" [waɪ.jr]
"hire (noun)" [həɪ.jr]
"hire (verb)" [haɪ.jr]
"fire (noun)" [fəɪ.jr]
"fire (verb)" [fai.jr]
This is indeed weird. I have never heard this before.
(I just realized I do this weird noun/verb thing about two minutes ago, so it's not anything I consciously did...)
Your character, then, is salvageable.
Then, on top of all that, I raise the vowel in the word "house" to [həʊs], but I don't raise [aʊ] anywhere else. (As a result, I have another noun/verb pair with "houses (n)" [həʊzɪz] vs "houses (v)" [haʊzɪz]).
My raising of /aʊ/ seems to follow similar rules to /ai/ -- mostly before unvoiced consonants. But /aʊ/ doesn't raise before a "syllabic" r ... so "pyre" has raising but "power" does not.
I have the raised version in "house" and all its derivations, even those which cause the s to voice, like "houses" and "housing"
Mecislau, do you have the /ɑr/ -> /ʌr/ raising as well? Like I said, this one seems to happen before p. much any consonant: "card, carp, farm" the have raised version, while "car and far" don't. "Martian" does, but "mars" doesn't. "Barley" does, so does "parliament" ...
The emptiest possible contribution in this thread would be to point out the use of slashes in such as /aʊ/ > /əʊ/ and say that we ought to be using brackets here. The real reason I'm using / / is because I get to type regular r inside them and remain relatively immune to pedantry about [r] vs [ɹ].
<Anaxandridas> How many artists do you know get paid?
<Anaxandridas> Seriously, name five.
For instance, IMD:
I have raising before voiced /d/ in a few monomorphemic instances:
"tiger" ['təɪ.gr]
"spider" ['spəɪ.dr]
"hydro-" ['həi.droʊ]
don't have; have ; have
Well, that at least shows you're inconsistent as well. Not as much as I am, but definitely still inconsistent.
(Unless it has something to do with /d/ specifically for you?)
Berek wrote:Yeah, I've got this as well. "liar" for example is not homophonous with "lyre" (though how often do you hear lyre).
Hmm. Those are homophones for me.
Berek wrote:Your character, then, is salvageable.
I appreciate that.
Berek wrote:Mecislau, do you have the /ɑr/ -> /ʌr/ raising as well? Like I said, this one seems to happen before p. much any consonant: "card, carp, farm" the have raised version, while "car and far" don't. "Martian" does, but "mars" doesn't. "Barley" does, so does "parliament" ...
I do not.
Berek wrote:The emptiest possible contribution in this thread would be to point out the use of slashes in such as /aʊ/ > /əʊ/ and say that we ought to be using brackets here. The real reason I'm using / / is because I get to type regular r inside them and remain relatively immune to pedantry about [r] vs [ɹ].
Well, I thought about that before I started writing my first post above, but I decided to stick with slashes simply due to the fact that I do seem to have a number of minimal pairs (like that Meijer/Myer thing) that can't be explained by phonological rules (like the "writer/rider" distinction can).
Mecislau wrote:
Well, that at least shows you're inconsistent as well. Not as much as I am, but definitely still inconsistent.
(Unless it has something to do with /d/ specifically for you?)
I don't think it does. Spider is the only raised-before-/d/ I can think of. I *do* have raising in places with [4] where that is from a /t/ -- mitre, lighter, writer. But I don't have it where it's before /d/. So like you mention below, it's the vowel that distinguishes writer/rider and whiter/wider etc. Spider seems to be an exception.
Well, I thought about that before I started writing my first post above, but I decided to stick with slashes simply due to the fact that I do seem to have a number of minimal pairs (like that Meijer/Myer thing) that can't be explained by phonological rules (like the "writer/rider" distinction can).
Yes, I was sticking with your convention -- such is communication -- and pre-emptively addressing a potential future derailment from someone else.
<Anaxandridas> How many artists do you know get paid?
<Anaxandridas> Seriously, name five.
Mecislau wrote:The "classical" definition of Canadian Raising is that /aɪ/ becomes /əɪ/ before unvoiced consonants (and in some dialects, /aʊ/ > /əʊ/ as well).
Just for the record, "Canadian raising" is defined as both of these changes. If a dialect only features the /ai/ change and not the /au/ change, it does not demonstrate Canadian raising.
I would post in this thread, but I do not want to bother with yet another long thread derailed by people arguing just about every last phone I transcribe...
Travis B. wrote:I would post in this thread, but I do not want to bother with yet another long thread derailed by people arguing just about every last phone I transcribe...
I, for one, would appreciate your input on the subject and I don't too much mind the preciseness of your transcriptions. And really, idio/dialectal analysis is just interesting to me generally.
I have changed my mind with regard to responding to this thread, and will detail Canadian Raising as it operates in my own dialect and, seemingly, in other related Inland North dialects.
My dialect as I speak it has Canadian Raising for historical /aɪ̯/, /aʊ̯/, and /ɑːr/, but the details for for all three differ considerably. This is to the point that, even though I have Canadian Raising for both, ignoring the status of phonemicness of vowel length* in my dialect, historical /aɪ̯/ has split into two phonemes* /ae̯/ and /əe̯/ and historical /ɑːr/ has split into two different cases* /ar/ and /ʌr/, with the latter still constrasting with /ər/, while historical /aʊ̯/ has remained one phoneme* /ɑɔ̯/.
Another important note is that Canadian Raising has been a point of major sound change in my dialect within living memory, such that older people may lack it altogether, middle-aged people often have it only inconsistently for historical /aɪ̯/ and /ɑːr/, while younger people have it unequivocably for historical /aɪ̯/ and /ɑːr/ in all registers and have it, often inconsistently, for historical /aʊ̯/ in everyday speech but typically lack it for historical /aʊ̯/ in higher registers. Note that this may also be highly dependent on social class and the exact dialect one speaks**, as a lot of changes of this sort in southeastern Wisconsin are by far most advanced in the speech of working-class, urban white people, are less advanced in the speech of middle-class, suburban and urban white people, are least advanced in the speech of rural white people, and have not affected the speech of non-white people except those who have fully integrated into white middle-class society at all.
As has already been discussed in this thread, the Canadian Raising of historical /aɪ̯/ is by far the most complex and most interesting of Canadian Raising in my dialect as well. The reason why I analyze it has undergoing a phonemic split is that its distribution is no longer predictable by any means at all, with there being both exceptions where it has not occurred where it seemingly should occur and isolated cases of it occurring where it seemingly should not have occurred. Likewise, if often acts inconsistently in the case of dialect borrowing.
For historical /aɪ̯/ I have the following pattern, with any cases not mentioned normally having become /ae̯/:
All cases of historical /aɪ̯/ with a following fortis obstruent before a next vowel without a preceding lenis obstruent in the same morpheme have become /əe̯/. For instance, light has /əe̯/. Note that this is the case that seems most resistant to the effects of dialect borrowing, with there being no counterexamples that I can recall off-hand.
Most cases of historical /aɪ̯/ without a following fortis obstruent in the same morpheme have become /ae̯/. For instance, lie and ninety have /ae̯/. However, there are some notable lexical items such as high school where a fortis obstruent in a following morpheme has conditioned historical /aɪ̯/ to become /əe̯/ rather than the expected /ae̯/.
All cases of historical /aɪ̯/ followed immediately by historical /r/ in the same morpheme, even if that historical /r/ is conditioned to become syllabic due to not being followed by another vowel, have become /əe̯/. For instance, tire, lyre, spire, sire, mire, wire (whether noun or verb), hire (whether noun or verb), and hire (whether noun or verb) all have /əe̯/.
All cases of historical /aɪ̯/ followed immediately by historical /r/ across a morpheme boundary have become /ae̯/. For instance, high-ranger has /ae̯/.
All cases of historical /aɪ̯/ followed immediately by historical /ər/ have become /ae̯/. For instance, liar, higher, and the names Meyer/Meier/Meijer and Myer have /ae̯/.
Many cases of historical /aɪ̯/ followed by a historical lenis obstruent followed in turn by historical /ər/ all within the same morpheme have become /əe̯/. For instance, tiger, spider, cider. and cyber(-) have /əe̯/. Note that I normally apply this to new words that I learn from reading them as opposed to hearing them; for instance, I have /əe̯/ in words learned from reading them such as Tiber.
However, many cases of historical /aɪ̯/ followed by a historical lenis obstruent followed in turn by historical /ər/, especially if not all of them fall in the same morpheme, have become /ae̯/. For instance, fiber, miser, and insider have /ae̯/. Note that this seems to be the fate of dialect loans from dialects without Canadian Raising.
Historical /aɪ̯/ followed by /d/ followed by another non-front vowel in the same morpheme seems to also often have become /əe̯/. For instance, Idaho, Ida, idol, Midol, and bridle have /əe̯/. Note that bridal, where a morpheme boundary is present, has /ae̯/. Also note that in formal speech some of these cases such as Midol and bridle have /ae̯/.
There are also some other irregular cases of historical /aɪ̯/ having become /əe̯/, such as hydrogen (which actually has /ər/ for me) and other cases of hydro- in everyday speech (which have /r/ instead of /ər/ for me). However, other similar words such as Hydra have /ae̯/. Likewise, in formal speech hydro- except in hydrogen has /ae̯/.
For historical /ɑːr/, there is a simpler pattern but one that still has irregularies and is rather heavily influenced by dialect borrowing, which is as follows, with unspecified cases becoming /ar/ (but still realized with [ɑ]):
Most cases of historical /ɑːr/ with a following fortis obstruent before a next vowel without a preceding lenis obstruent in the same morpheme have become /ʌr/. For instance, art, park, cart, carp, barf, and hearth have /ʌr/.
However, some cases of historical /ɑːr/ with a following fortis obstruent before a next vowel without a preceding lenis obstruent have become /ar/ or have become /ʌr/ only in very informal speech, otherwise becoming /ar/. Note that this is especially the case with regard to words primarily only used in formal speech, words that are likely to be subject to dialect borrowing, and names. For instance, farce, parquet and Martha have /ʌr/ in very informal speech but otherwise tend to have /ar/, especially in formal speech. In particular, certain names are typically pronounced with /ar/ where /ʌr/ would be expected, such as Garth as in Garth Brooks. One other notable case that must be mentioned here is aren't, which always has /ar/ regardless of register.
Conversely, there are certain words that have /ʌr/ where /ar/ would be expected, for reasons that are unclear. For instance, target and Mardi Gras have /ʌr/.
Unlike historical /aɪ̯/ and /ɑːr/, historical /aʊ̯/ behaves in a much simpler fashion when it undergoes Canadian Raising in the first place. Historical /aʊ̯/ merely undergoes phonetic variation without any signs of phonemic splitting or any influence from dialect borrowing or irregular sound change. It undergoes relatively free variation in height between [ɑɔ̯] and [ɑ̝o̯], or when reduced to a monophthong, between [ɑ] and [ɑ̝], where following fortis obstruents before a next vowel without preceding lenis obstruents encourage realizations with a higher nucleus and, if present, offglide. However, this variation is quite free, such that it is present to a degree even when a fortis obstruent before a next vowel is not present. For instance, house (the noun) tends to have [ɑ̝o̯] while house (the verb) tends to have [ɑɔ̯], but the height variation between them is not nearly as fixed in nature as it is with historical /aɪ̯/ and /ɑːr/.
* This is another discussion unto itself, which has gone on here before on a number of occasions, but basically my dialect has lost historical English vowel length and replaced it solely with allophonic vowel length, but this allophony has since been obscured and complicated by further sound change so as to become distinctive in practice. However, there are fundamental theoretical problems with both treating vowel length as still allophonic in my dialect and with treating vowel length as having becoming phonemic again in my dialect. Neither analysis seems viable to me when viewed in isolation, yet from a traditional phonemic view of things one analysis must be true and the other must be false. The only workable solutions I have thought of are radical ones, in that they involve abandoning the phoneme as a proposed psycholinguistic construct altogether.
** I may actually understate the influence of age, social class, and the exact variety one speaks here, as I have encountered elderly working-class white Milwaukeeans that speak far closer to how I normally speak, phonologically, than my parents, who essentially speak something roughly equivalent to my semi-formal in-dialect speech even at home and who speak localized General American away from home. Conversely, I have met younger rural people from southeastern Wisconsin who spoke even more conservatively than my parents speak. It should be also noted that rural southeastern Wisconsin has had far less time to develop any sort of English dialect of its own than working-class Milwaukee has, with there seemingly being a lag of at least one if not two generations with regard to the full adoption of English there. Rural southeastern Wisconsin likely went directly from German to General American within the space of a generation or two, with German still being very much used in places as a language at home within living memory.
Errata: Fixed some cases where I had written [ɑ̟o̯] or [ɑ̟] instead of the intended [ɑ̝o̯] or [ɑ̝].
Last edited by Travis B. on Mon Aug 09, 2010 2:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
house vs houses is probably because the 's' is voiced in the second word, and Canadian raising doesnt normally occur before /z/ or any other voiced sound. Likewise spider and cider might be mentally reanalyzed as "spiter" and "citer" and therefore gain the raising given to other words with flapped /t/ even though the sound is still voiced, whereas tiger wouldnt be raised because there is no tendency to voice intervocalic /k/ into [g].
That said, there is still a lot of randomness in the peripheral areas of the Canadian raising, such as fire/tire versus spire/wire, which I pronounce the same as you.
Do you raise only "house"? Not mouse, louse, grouse, souse, blouse, etc? I have [Vw] for all (not ə).
For Meijer, maybe the whole of Maryland has just imported the way they hear it spoken in the Midwest, where Canadian raising is much more firmly implanted.
Also, I gather you dont have the raising in words like "about", "out", "grouch" and other ou + voiceless stop environments? (we seem to lack -oup and -ouk in English)
Soap wrote:house vs houses is probably because the 's' is voiced in the second word, and Canadian raising doesnt normally occur before /z/ or any other voiced sound.
Yes, so I assumed; the fact that I then maintain a difference between "houses" the noun and "houses" the verb strongly suggests it's becoming phonemic, at least IMI.
Soap wrote:Likewise spider and cider might be mentally reanalyzed as "spiter" and "citer" and therefore gain the raising given to other words with flapped /t/ even though the sound is still voiced, whereas tiger wouldnt be raised because there is no tendency to voice intervocalic /k/ into [g].
But I do raise the vowel in "tiger".
Soap wrote:That said, there is still a lot of randomness in the peripheral areas of the Canadian raising, such as fire/tire versus spire/wire, which I pronounce the same as you.
Yeah, it's that randomness that I'm curious about.
Soap wrote:Do you raise only "house"? Not mouse, louse, grouse, souse, blouse, etc? I have [Vw] for all (not ə).
Nope, only "house". That may well be a result of moving from an area with fuller Canadian raising (SW Michigan) to an area with only /aɪ/-raising (Maryland) when I was eight.
Soap wrote:For Meijer, maybe the whole of Maryland has just imported the way they hear it spoken in the Midwest, where Canadian raising is much more firmly implanted.
I doubt many people in Maryland have even heard of Meijer. This is purely going back to the Michigan origins of my own idiolect, though my family who still live there do the exact same Meijer/Myer thing.
Soap wrote:Also, I gather you dont have the raising in words like "about", "out", "grouch" and other ou + voiceless stop environments? (we seem to lack -oup and -ouk in English)
Soap wrote:Likewise spider and cider might be mentally reanalyzed as "spiter" and "citer" and therefore gain the raising given to other words with flapped /t/ even though the sound is still voiced, whereas tiger wouldnt be raised because there is no tendency to voice intervocalic /k/ into [g].
That certainly is not the case in my own dialect, as even when one excludes words without /d/ such as tiger that have Canadian Raising in them, the matter is that my dialect does not merge unstressed intervocalic /t/ and /d/ at all. Rather, vowel length still distinguishes cases of unstressed intervocalic /t/ from /d/, and furthermore when they are not elided unstressed intervocalic /t/ actually remains voiceless when flapped while unstressed intervocalic /d/ readily voices when flapped.
Errata: For examples of what I am talking about, with the above:
However, there are some notable lexical items such as high school where a fortis obstruent in a following morpheme has conditioned historical /aɪ̯/ to become /əe̯/ rather than the expected /ae̯/.
Soap wrote:Likewise spider and cider might be mentally reanalyzed as "spiter" and "citer" and therefore gain the raising given to other words with flapped /t/ even though the sound is still voiced, whereas tiger wouldnt be raised because there is no tendency to voice intervocalic /k/ into [g].
That certainly is not the case in my own dialect, as even when one excludes words without /d/ such as tiger that have Canadian Raising in them, the matter is that my dialect does not merge unstressed intervocalic /t/ and /d/ at all. Rather, vowel length still distinguishes cases of unstressed intervocalic /t/ from /d/, and furthermore when they are not elided unstressed intervocalic /t/ actually remains voiceless when flapped while unstressed intervocalic /d/ readily voices when flapped.
Errata: For examples of what I am talking about, with the above:
Is it me, or does it seem that my dialect has completely reversed the overall starting points of historical /aɪ̯/ and /aʊ̯/, both with and without Canadian Raising, compared to most other North American English dialects? It seems that most North American English dialects have a clearly fronted and often raised starting point for historical /aʊ̯/, with or without Canadian Raising, such as [æ] or, particularly with Canadian Raising applying, [ɛ]. Likewise, it seems that most NAE dialects have at most a central starting point for historical /aɪ̯/ when having not undergone Canadian Raising, such as [ä], may have a backed starting point even without Canadian Raising such as [ɑ], and despite sometimes having a central starting point with Canadian Raising such as [ə] seems to very commonly have a backed starting point such as [ʌ] with Canadian Raising.
The scheme my dialect has, on the other hand, has a very fronted starting point for historical /aɪ̯/, which could be described as [a̟] or [æ̞] were one wanting to emphasize its frontness; it is significantly fronter than my [ä] that is my typical realization of historical /ɑː/ not adjacent to /r/, /l/, /w/, or /h/. With Canadian Raising, my historical /aɪ̯/ still has a central starting point as [ə] rather than undergoing any significant backing. Conversely, my historical /aʊ̯/ has a starting point of [ɑ] without Canadian Raising or [ɑ̝] with Canadian Raising.
As a result, my dialect seemingly has essentially the opposite of the frontness and backness of the starting points for un-Canadian Raised historical /aɪ̯/ and /aʊ̯/ as in most other NAE dialects, and even with Canadian Raising it keeps the relative positions of the onsets of the two reversed relative to most other NAE dialects. And this is even though my dialect is certainly descended from western New England dialects just as General American and most other English dialects in the northern US not along the East Coast are. Just why would my dialect have developed basically the reverse pattern of the starting points for historical /aɪ̯/ and /aʊ̯/ from even many other relatively closely related dialects?
