Incipient /ay/-Raising in Baton Rouge

Abstract

Canadian raising targeting the /ay/ diphthong has been reported for a number of dialects of U.S. English. In the United States and elsewhere, however, the incipient—or purely phonetic—stage of diphthong raising, wherein it is triggered only by consonants that are phonetically voiceless, has been notoriously difficult to capture. In such a stage, raising is expected before the /t/ in cite (/saɪt/ → [sʌɪt]) but not before the flapped-/t/ in citing (/saɪtɪŋ/ → [saɪɾɪŋ]). Berkson, Davis, and Strickler (in press) recently discovered incipient phonetic raising in northeastern Indiana, however, and have suggested that extremely short diphthongs immediately preceding a primary stress (as in citation, psychology) may be the very first to undergo raising. We investigate this hypothesis with data from Louisiana. While Yat English spoken near New Orleans has been reported as an /aw/-raising dialect (Carmichael, 2012), we also find /ay/-raising in New Orleans. Furthermore, the question of whether raising is present in...