The Canadian Shift: Still shifting?

Céleste Peterka

doi:10.33137/twpl.v41i1.32759

Abstract

Previous literature on the Canadian Shift describes this phenomenon as a change in progress in many dialects of Canadian English. However, elements of the shift are not found to be consistent, particularly in the lowering of [ɪ] and [ɛ] and the retraction of [æ]. This paper investigates apparent time data from eight native speakers of Canadian English from the Ottawa area to investigate the nature of the Shift in the region, as well as to better understand how the Shift is manifested here compared to previous literature. Results presented in this paper, which were collected as part of an ongoing study, show that younger speakers produce only [ɪ] and [ɛ] vowels more retracted than older speakers. These data will later be compared to results of a perception study in order to investigate the relationship between perception and production of a sound change in progress.

Highlights

The cause of this vowel shift is possibly related to the low-back merger, in which the vowel [ɔ] merges with [ɑ] in many dialects of Canadian English
This study looks at Thunder Bay in apparent time, and the results from the shifting of younger speakers’ vowels are not significant compared to older speakers, with the exception of the [ɑ] vowel, where younger speakers have a significant retraction compared to older speakers
The normalized vowel plots for each speaker group are shown in Figure 2, younger speakers are shown in grey while older speakers are in black

Summary

Introduction

The cause of this vowel shift is possibly related to the low-back merger, in which the vowel [ɔ] merges with [ɑ] in many dialects of Canadian English. In this study, Clarke et al (1995) investigate the Canadian Shift using impressionistic data from Ontarians, where they found evidence that younger speakers of Canadian English do produce shifted vowels as predicted by the Canadian Shift. More recent studies use acoustic data and find evidence of the Canadian Shift across Canada, for example, in Toronto and Thunder Bay (Roeder 2012), Montreal (Boberg 2005; Kettig and Winter 2017), as well as Vancouver and Halifax (Sadlier-Brown and Tamminga 2008). While the results are slightly different than earlier studies from Montreal, they do suggest that the Canadian Shift is still active in some ways in more recent years

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion