ACOUSTIC PHONETIC VERIFICATION OF CANADIAN RAISING OF /AI/ AND /AU/ IN MINNESOTA ENGLISH

Authors

Ettien Koffi, St. Cloud State UniversityFollow

Abstract

The diphthongs [ɑɪ] and [aʊ] are produced respectively as [ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ] by Canadians. This pronunciation was first mentioned in a primer in Canada in 1890. Joos drew scholarly attention to it in a seminal paper in 1942. It was later dubbed “Canadian Raising” by Chambers (1973). Vance (1987) contends that /aɪ/-raising was heard in Fergus Falls, MN, as far back as 1930s, but said nothing about the occurrence of /aʊ/-raising. The goal of this paper is to discuss the status of Canadian Raising in Minnesota English. Two separate experiments were conducted in which 18 Minnesotans produced 40 words embedded into the elicitation sentence, , again>. The findings discussed in this paper are based on 2,160 measured tokens (40 words x 18 participants x 3 correlates (F1, F2, F3)). Just Noticeable Difference (JND) thresholds in the frequency domain are summoned to evaluate the type of Canadian Raising found in Minnesota English.