Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T13:07:54.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Canadian Raising, Opacity, and Rephonemicization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

William J. Idsardi
William J. Idsardi*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Canadian Raising—the phonetic changes in vowel quality and quantity in the diphthongs /ai/ and/ au/ before voiceless consonants—has been of considerable importance to phonological theories ever since Joos (1975). The opaque interaction of Canadian Raising and flapping in words such as writer consitutes one of the main arguments for rule ordering in phonology (Chomsky and Halle 1968; Chambers 1975). Recently, Mielke, Armstrong, and Hume (2003) have challenged Joos’s phonemic splitting analysis and have argued that Canadian Raising, rather than being a productive phonological process, is a static lexicalized generalization implemented as a choice between allomorphic variants. A rebuttal to this allomorphic analysis is offered based on evidence that, for some speakers, Canadian Raising productively applies in novel morphological contexts, in language games, and in the phrasal phonology, none of which are amenable to an allomorphic analysis.

Résumé

Résumé

Le Canadian Raising—qui implique des changements phonétiques qualitatifs et quantitatifs dans la voyelle des diphtongues /ai/ and /au/ devant les consonnes non-voisées—a suscité un intérêt particulier pour les théories phonologiques depuis Joos (1975). L’intéraction complexe du Canadian Raising et du battement dans des mots comme writer a constitué un des principaux arguments pour l’ordonnance des règles en phonologie (Chomsky et Halle 1968; Chambers 1975). Récemment, Mielke, Armstrong et Hume (2003) remettent en question l’analyse de Joos selon laquelle ce phénomène impliquerait une scission phonémique. Les auteurs argumentent que le Canadian Raising n’est pas un processus phonologique productif, mais revêt plutôt le statut d’une généralisation lexicalisée et statique qui constitue un choix parmi plusieurs variantes allomorphiques. Cette analyse allomorphique est ici réfutée sur la base de données indiquant que, pour certains locuteurs, le Canadian Raising s’applique de façon productive dans de nouveaux contextes morphologiques, dans les jeux de langue, et aussi dans la phonologie phrastique; aucun de ces contextes ne se prête à une analyse en termes d’allomorphie.

Type
Sounds Canadian
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 51 , Issue 2-3: Canadian English in a Global Context , November 2006 , pp. 119 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bermudez-Otero, Ricardo. 2003. The acquisition of phonological opacity. Ms., Rutgers Optimality Archive 593.Google Scholar
Bloch, Bernard. 1972. Phonemic overlapping. In Phonological theory: Evolution and current practice, ed. B., Valerie, Makkai, , 66–70. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. [1941.]Google Scholar
Chambers, J.K. ed. 1975. Canadian English: Origins and structures. Toronto: Methuen.Google Scholar
Chambers, J.K. 1989. Canadian Raising: Blocking, fronting, etc. American Speech 64:75–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1964. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1972. Review of Jakobson, Roman and Halle, Morris, Fundamentals of Language. In Phonological theory: Evolution and current practice, ed. Makkai, Valerie B., 343–350. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. [1957.]Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1980. Rules and representations. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam, and Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Currie Hall, Kathleen. 2005. Canadian Raising revisited: Evidence for a gradient, lexicon-based approach. Paper read at the Canadian English in the Global Context conference, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. 1997. Canadian raising in a midwestern U.S. city. Language Variation and Change 9:107–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan. 1981. Abstractness and explanation in phonology. In Explanation in linguistics: The logical problem of language acquisition, ed. Hornstein, Norbert and Lightfoot, David, 76–115. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan. 2005. Chomsky and Halle’s revolution in phonology. In The Cambridge companion to Chomsky, ed. McGilvray, James, 102–122. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Anthony D. 2004. Opacity in Tiberian Hebrew: Morphology, not phonology. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 37:37–70. Rutgers Optimality Archive 703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halle, Morris. 1959. The sound pattern of Russian. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris. 1972. Phonology in Generative grammar. In Phonological theory: Evolution and current practice, ed. Makkai, Valerie B., 380–392. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston. [1962.]Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1960. Structural linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [1951.]Google Scholar
Joos, Martin. 1975. A phonological dilemma in Canadian English. In Canadian English: Origins and structures, ed. Chambers, J. K., 79–82. Toronto: Methuen. [1942.]Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. 1993. A case of surface constraint violation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 38:169–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mielke, Jeff, Armstrong, Mike, and Hume, Elizabeth. 2003. Looking through opacity. Theoretical Linguistics 29:123–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreton, Elliott, and Thomas, Erik R.. To appear. Origins of Canadian Raising in voiceless-coda effects: A case study in phonologization. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology 9, ed. Cole, Jennifer and Hualde, José I.. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carole. 1980. La règle de Canadian Raising et l’analyse en structure syllabique. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 25:35–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, Alan, and Smolensky, Paul. 2004. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in Generative grammar. Cambridge: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Caroline. 1997. The devoicing of /z/ in American English: Effects of local and prosodie context. Journal of Phonetics 25:471–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. 2001. An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Publications of the American Dialect Society No. 85. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Vance, Timothy J. 1987. “Canadian Raising” in some dialects of the northern United States. American Speech 62:195–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar