"Canadian Raising" in Some Dialects of the Northern United States

Abstract

T HE PRONUNCIATION OF ONTARIO ENGLISH, according to Joos (1942, 141) is nearly identical to that of GENERAL AMERICAN. He notes only two differences of any consequence, and his discussion focuses on one of these, namely the existence of two variants for the diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/ in Ontario. As Joos describes it, the basic Canadian pattern is that these diphthongs have higher starting points before voiceless consonants than in other environments. The examples in (1) illustrate.'