Canadian raising in Fort Wayne, Indiana

Abstract

The phenomenon often referred to as Canadian Raising, wherein speakers raise the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ to [ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ], respectively, when preceding voiceless sounds, is attested not only in Canada but also in places in the Northern periphery of the U.S. (e.g., Ann Arbor and the Upper Peninsula, in Michigan). Raising has also been documented in locations distant from the border, such as Philadelphia. The current study examines the spread of raising farther south from Michigan into northeast Indiana, specifically Fort Wayne. Acoustic analysis of preliminary data from Fort Wayne area speakers was conducted to determine whether raising indeed occurs and to explore the effect of contextual factors such as speaker sex, age, and prosodic structure. The results confirm that while this raising does in fact happen around Fort Wayne, there is an age effect: younger speakers (<25 yr) show raising across the board in the expected environments but older speakers (>60 yr) do not. This suggests that vowel raising is a relatively new characteristic of Fort Wayne English.