# **Marker: Canadian Raising** $(/aɪ/ → [ʌɪ] / C_o[-voice]\\$)$ ## In Greater Philadelphia * /aɪ/ raises before voiceless codas, making *rice* sound more like *Royce* and less like *rise*. This is one of the two components of a phenomenon called Canadian Raising (but the only one investigated here). * In addition to occurring in Canada (see Chambers, 2006, for a review), Canadian Raising has been reported in many of the Northern Cities: * Ann Arbor (Dailey-O’Cain, 1997) * Detroit (Niedzielski, 1999) * Martha’s Vineyard (Labov, 1963) * Upstate New York (Vance, 1987) * Philadelphia (e.g., Labov, 1994, pp. 59–60, 82-83). In Philadelphia, this is seen as a decrease of approximately 60Hz in /aɪ/ following voiceless codas relative to /aɪ/ found elsewhere (Labov et al., 2013). ### Both social and stylistic stratification. * **Sex**: Men lead the change in Philadelphia. This is different from other regions of the US (save for Martha’s Vineyard), where women dominate the change (Labov, 2001, p. 292). * No main effect of **socioeconomic status**. * There is an interaction between speaker sex and socioeconomic status: * **Women** raise the vowel as socioeconomic status rises, * **Men** show limited-to-no social stratification (Labov, 2001, pp. 300–303). * No significant difference in /aɪ/ height between men and women among unskilled workers (Labov, 2001, p. 461). ## African American Rejection of Canadian Raising * Curvilinear pattern: those born between 1920 and 1950 roughly mirror white speakers, but then they sharply recede to a point only slightly above where the community was before the change. * Blacks appear not to have adopted Canadian Raising either. ## Puerto Rican Trends * Change in-progress has been almost universally adopted by Puerto Ricans. ### Speaker Sex * Distinction between favorable and disfavorable contexts is greater for younger females than for older females, which suggests Canadian Raising is advancing. * The degree of distinction between favorable and disfavorable contexts for males follows a similar, though weaker, trend. * Evidence that **women lead the change** in the Puerto Rican population, in contrast to white Philadelphians. [Canadian Raising by Sex and Birth Year (Conversational Data)][1] [Canadian Raising by Sex and Birth Year (Read Data)][2] ### Speech Style * F1 values for disfavorable contexts in the read speech data are comparable to the favorable contexts in the conversational data. * The vowel in favorable contexts then raises even further in the read speech data; these are the highest values recorded and lie at the upper end of the values obtained for white speakers in conversational speech (Labov et al., 2013). [Canadian Raising by Speech Style][3] ### Socioeconomic Status Social stratification is not readily apparent. This aligns with the contemporary case for white males, where social stratification is absent (Labov, 2001, p. 233), but not with white females, where there is a gradual decrease in /aɪ/ height as socioeconomic status increases. Speakers from all socioeconomic strata make the distinction between the centralized and non-centralized variant, and all show a tendency to centralize to a greater degree in formal than in informal speech. [Candian Raising by SES and Speech Style][4] [1]: https://osf.io/4eu3m [2]: https://osf.io/n4prb/?view_only=4055f472404f4a92bbdf26f7b11bd88b [3]: https://osf.io/n24xm [4]: https://osf.io/qgtpu