# Canadian Raising in other Languages



## JuanEscritor

Are there any other languages (or their dialects) with the /aɪ/ or /aʊ/ diphthong phonemes that exhibit raising of the nucleus in short-vowel environments?  

A while back I was researching Canadian Raising, and came across a paper by Elliot Moreton and Erik Thomas, in which the authors claim that the motivation behind Canadian Raising is purely phonetic and that it is not related to the Great Vowel Shift, as most sources seem to believe.

Despite a regular full-time job, I've put quite a bit of my time into researching Canadian Raising, including measuring vowel lengths of a few speakers—though I've lost some of the measurements—in different phonetic environments where CR occurs.  To avoid being lengthy, I will say that I have come to the conclusion that CR is undoubtedly a residual side-effect of the GVS acting on diphthongs with varying lengths in different morpho-phonetic contexts.  I believe the evidence is overwhelming to this point, but will not present it unless the thread takes that direction.

For now I will return to Moreton's and Thomas's claim that CR is the result of natural phonetic motivation.  They admit no knowledge of languages other than English exhibiting CR, claiming that the phonological process responsible for it (what they call 'Asymmetric Assimilation') has so far only been found in English.  However, they also claim that "there is some reason to expect it in other languages".1 

And thus the purpose of this thread: to find out whether there really are other languages that exhibit Canadian Raising of /aɪ/ or /aʊ/ (Moreton and Thomas focus only on the former) when the diphthong occurs in phonetic environments similar to those which trigger its appearance in English CR dialects.

Are there any examples of this outside of English?

JE
__________
Moreton and Thomas (2004 p.16)
__________
Moreton, E., and Thomas, E. (2004) "Origins of Canadian Raising in voiceless-coda effects: A case study in phonologization" (available online: http://www.unc.edu/~moreton/Papers/MoretonThomasLabPhon2004.pdf)


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## berndf

For what it's worth, the opposite occurs in Swiss German (the effect being a bit more subtle, though). In standard German, the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ by processes similar to those of the GVS: /i:/>/ɪj/>/ɛj/>/aɪ/ and /u:/>/aʊ/ (I don't know the intermediary stages here); examples: _vîle>Feile_ (=_file_; as in _nail file_ not as in _computer file_), _hûs>Haus_ (=_house_). The standard realizations are [ɐɪ] and [ɐʊ]. Only Swiss speaker regularly realize them [aɪ] and [aʊ]. For a Standard German speaker that sounds a bit like [a:ɪ] and [a:ʊ]; this is because [ɐ] is also the standard realization of the monophthong /a/ while [a:] is the standard realization of /a:/.


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## JuanEscritor

Very interesting, berndf!

Are there any dialectical variations with these vowels conditioned by their environment?  

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Very interesting, berndf!
> 
> Are there any dialectical variations with these vowels conditioned by their environment?
> 
> JE


I've been thinking but until now haven't found any conditions. The problem is that Germans generally don't recognize their /a/ and /a:/ vowels are qualitatively different and this whole issue is rarely discussed in the literature.


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## JuanEscritor

Fair enough.  Are there any length variations that you are aware of with the /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ diphthongs?  

JE


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## Youngfun

This may be interesting. In a forum about my native dialect, Wenzhounese (dialect of Wu Chinese), I've found this comparison between the vowel shift in English, and the one that occurs from Middle Wu to today's Wenzhounese.

Vowel shift in English:
ex.   ME    > 1600 >  1700 >  today
time /iː/ > /əi/ > /ai/ > /aɪ/
see /eː/ > /iː/ > /iː/ > /iː/
sea /ɛː/ > /eː/ > /iː/ > /iː/
make /aː/ > /ɛː/ > /eː/ > /eɪ/
stone /ɔː/ > /oː/ > /oː/ > /əʊ/
food /oː/ > /uː/ > /uː/ > /uː/
house /uː/ > /əu/ > /au/ > /aʊ/

*ME=Middle English

Vowel shift in Wenzhounese:
C  MW >   ??   > 1900 >   today      Modern Mandarin
李 /iː/ > /iː/ > /ɪi/ > /ei/          /i/
天 /eː/ > /ie/ > /iɪ/ > /i/          /i̯ɛn/
* 猜 /ɛː/ > /eː/ > /ɪː/ > /ei/         /aɪ̯/*
相 /aː/ > /ɛː/ > /ie/ > /i/         /iɑŋ/
可 /ɔː/ > /oː/ > /oː/ > /ʊ/        /ə/~/ɤ/
火 /oː/ > /uː/ > /uː/ > /ɯ/       /u̯ɔ/
走 /uː/ > /əu/ > /ɐu/ > /ɐɯ/    /ɤʊ̯/

C=Chinese character
MW=Middle Wu Chinese

As comparison I've also added the corresponding vowel in Modern Mandarin, which are historically more conservative (even more than Middle Wu).
The bold line seems the closest to Canadian Rising.
/iː/ > /ɪi/ is also very similar to many dialects of English.
The vowel [ɑʊ̯] of Mandarin usually becomes [ou] in Cantonese, and a monophtong in most Southern Chinese dialects.


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## JuanEscritor

Youngfun said:


> Vowel shift in Wenzhounese:
> C  MW >   ??   > 1900 >   today      Modern Mandarin
> 李 /iː/ > /iː/ > /ɪi/ > /ei/          /i/
> 天 /eː/ > /ie/ > /iɪ/ > /i/          /i̯ɛn/
> * 猜 /ɛː/ > /eː/ > /ɪː/ > /ei/         /aɪ̯/*
> 相 /aː/ > /ɛː/ > /ie/ > /i/         /iɑŋ/
> 可 /ɔː/ > /oː/ > /oː/ > /ʊ/        /ə/~/ɤ/
> 火 /oː/ > /uː/ > /uː/ > /ɯ/       /u̯ɔ/
> 走 /uː/ > /əu/ > /ɐu/ > /ɐɯ/    /ɤʊ̯/
> 
> C=Chinese character
> MW=Middle Wu Chinese


So these changes only affected long vowels, creating qualitative distinctions where before there had been quantitative ones?  Is vowel length still phonemic in Modern Mandarin or has it been lost as a result of these shifts as it was in English?



> The vowel [ɑʊ̯] of Mandarin usually becomes [ou] in Cantonese, and a monophtong in most Southern Chinese dialects.


Now that is interesting!  Are there any conditions on this, or does it happen in all environments?


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## Alxmrphi

> Are there any other languages (or their dialects) with the /aɪ/ or /aʊ/ diphthong phonemes that exhibit raising of the nucleus in short-vowel environments?


I'm struggling to grasp exactly what you mean by short-vowel environments? If you've got a diphthong then surely that environment is not a short-vowel environment?
Or are you not talking about anything more than clipping-environments? Sorry, just want to make sure I follow what you're asking.

[Edit] - Aha, I took that line of "____" to be your signature and ignored what was underneath it but I looked again and realised it was a short list of references and one had a link. Question answered, it is voiceless (clipping) environments. I think calling it "short-vowel" environments is potentially quite confusing (but as with all things, when you know what actually is intended it becomes a lot more understandable).


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## JuanEscritor

Alxmrphi said:


> I'm struggling to grasp exactly what you mean by short-vowel environments? If you've got a diphthong then surely that environment is not a short-vowel environment?
> Or are you not talking about anything more than clipping-environments? Sorry, just want to make sure I follow what you're asking.
> 
> [Edit] - Aha, I took that line of "____" to be your signature and ignored what was underneath it but I looked again and realised it was a short list of references and one had a link. Question answered, it is voiceless (clipping) environments. I think calling it "short-vowel" environments is potentially quite confusing (but as with all things, when you know what actually is intended it becomes a lot more understandable).


The raised diphthong is most certainly shorter than the unraised one in CR dialects; furthermore, the environments in which the shorter raised form appear also trigger shorter versions of other vowels.  So the word _cider_ has [ʌi] while _sider_ retains [aɪ]; at the same time the vowel in _cedar_ is shorter than the vowel in _seeder_, though here there is no qualitative change in the vowel.  In CR, we see a _quantitative_ change triggering a _qualitative_ change in the /aɪ/ vowel.

We can describe the variations in terms of morpho-phonemic environments:

V → v/ 's-.dɚ
V → V/ 's-.d#ɚ

Any vowel inserted will behave according to these rules; any vowel that is subject to qualitative variation depending on its length (such as /aɪ/) will exhibit the appropriate changes in the relative contexts.  For CR, the restrictive rule will keep [ʌi] in the short-vowel environment and [aɪ] in the longer vowel environments.

Thus CR is triggered by vowel length and vowel length is triggered by the morpho-phonemic environment.

I'm trying to find whether there are other languages that exhibit this same pattern with the two diphthongs in question (or either one of them) to evaluate the claim made by Moreton and Thomas that these are purely phonetically-motivated changes unrelated to the English GVS that would have also left the same distributional pattern.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Fair enough.  Are there any length  variations that you are aware of with the /aɪ/ and /aʊ/  diphthongs?


Unfortunately not. This is an observation from listening not from measuring. And as I am a Standard German native speaker I perceive [a] always as longer than [ɐ] (you would probably transcribe it [ʌ] because [ɐ] belongs phonologically to /ʌ/ in English) irrespective of real length.



JuanEscritor said:


> Thus CR is triggered by vowel length and vowel length is triggered by the morpho-phonemic environment.
> 
> I'm trying to find whether there are other languages that exhibit this same pattern with the two diphthongs in question (or either one of them) to evaluate the claim made by Moreton and Thomas that these are purely phonetically-motivated changes unrelated to the English GVS that would have also left the same distributional pattern.
> 
> JE


It must be then because /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are phonemically certainly long. Maybe you should look at Scots or Scottish English because it is at an earlier stage of the GVS and _house _is depending on dialect either /hu:s/ or /həʊs/.


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## Alxmrphi

Regarding this being related to morphemes (just like ŋg -> ŋ / V_# in Early Modern English), are there examples in the research you've done that have maintained the change and aren't just potential formations that fit the environment? With something like 'sid#er' I can see that you might get a distinction based on a novel analysis which could be overridden in other more common words that have been passed down orally (like 'cider'). If that's the case then I'd give a lot more credence to your analysis and find it pretty promising. If not, then it still seems a good hypothesis, but something that would for me, always need more data to make _firm_ conclusions regarding potential motivations given other explanations of how those differences might have come about (as I mentioned before).

Given that you said "any vowel inserted will behave according to these rules" I imagine there must be a fairly lengthy list of examples which allows such a wide-ranging claim to be made and some of these must be able to starkly show a common history and frequency that shows a morpheme environment to be the deciding factor. The idea does make a lot of sense, because that is quite similar to what happened with NG-coalescence in English. I'm just curious about examples that don't need to resort to non-words to provide evidence for that claim.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Unfortunately not. This is an observation from listening not from measuring. And as I am a Standard German native speaker I perceive [a] always as longer than [ɐ] (you would probably transcribe it [ʌ] because [ɐ] belongs phonologically to /ʌ/ in English) irrespective of real length.
> 
> It must be then because /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are phonemically certainly long.


There is no such thing as phonemic vowel length in English.  Vowel length is always predictable.  While it is true that diphthongs are _longer_ than monophthongs, this does not mean that all diphthongs are long.  To say that a diphthong is short does not mean it has the duration of a short [ɪ], it just means it is shorter than other comparable diphthongs.  The vowels in _bead_ and _bid_ are considered 'long' even though they are not the same length.  They are considered this because each one is longer than itself in other contexts (for example, the words _beat _and _bit_).

Likewise, the vowel in _cider_ is shorter than the vowel in _sider_; and the vowel in _cedar_ is shorter than the vowel in _seeder_, as the morpho-phonemic conditions of each pair are identical to those of the other pair.  From my own speech:



*Word
**Length (sec)
*_cider_
0.156095
_sider_
0.206047
_cedar_
0.101830
_seeder_
0.144864



The raised diphthong is most definitely shorter than the unraised one by a degree comparable to the difference between other vowels in the same morpho-phonemic environments.



> Maybe you should look at Scots or Scottish English because it is at an earlier stage of the GVS and _house _is depending on dialect either /hu:s/ or /həʊs/.


Yes, CR is directly related to the vowel alterations that occur with the Scottish Vowel Length Rule as both show the raised forms in short-vowel environments and the unraised form in other environments.  I think they are both historically linked as being vestiges of the GVS.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> There is no such thing as phonemic vowel length in English.


If you restrict your analysis to modern North American dialects, this can reasonably be claimed. But I don't think this can be said of all dialects. In the phonology of RP most authors maintain the notion of phonemic vowel length.


JuanEscritor said:


> Vowel length is always predictable.


That is no contradiction. In languages with phonemic vowel length, long and short varieties of a vowel are normally accompanied by qualitative differences, i.e. long "i" =  [i:], short "i" = [I].


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## Alxmrphi

> But I don't think this can be said of all dialects.


Not of Australian English, I've read.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> If you restrict your analysis to modern North  American dialects, this can reasonably be claimed. But I don't think  this can be said of all dialects. In the phonology of RP most authors  maintain the notion of phonemic vowel length.


Contrastive minimal  pairs would be interesting to see.  I have taken a look at Australian  English, and  Wikipedia  gives some contrastive pairs of syllable rimes, but I don't see any  discussion on minimal pairs or how AuE handles vowel length in  loanwords.  As for RP, I see nothing on the Wikipedia entry to convince  me that there is a phonemic distinction between vowels based on their  lengths, though the AuE article does mention other English dialects that  have the feature.



> That is no contradiction. In languages with phonemic vowel  length, long and short varieties of a vowel are normally accompanied by  qualitative differences, i.e. long "i" =  [i:], short "i" = [I].


But  this is by no means a requirement.  One might call the type of phonemic  vowel length to which you are referring as somewhat 'defective'—i.e.,  the distinction between the vowels is not based entirely on vowel  length.  But I am talking about purely phonemic vowel length.  I am not  aware of any dialects of English that exhibits CR (including Scottish  ones) which make phonemic vowel length distinctions.

The vowel length distinction in CR is purely allophonic, and  accompanied by a qualitative change not seen in other vowels.  (That is,  the qualitative change only affects the CR diphthong(s), and not other  vowels even when in the same morpho-phonemic environments.)

JE


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## Youngfun

JuanEscritor said:


> So these changes only affected long vowels, creating qualitative distinctions where before there had been quantitative ones?  Is vowel length still phonemic in Modern Mandarin or has it been lost as a result of these shifts as it was in English?


To give a satisfactory answer, I should be more proficient in Middle Chinese at least.
But in Modern Mandarin (I would say most other Chinese languages too) the phonemic length distinction doesn't exist anymore. 
Actually I don't know if in Middle Chinese the distinction short/long vowel existed or not...

Now that is interesting!  Are there any conditions on this, or does it happen in all environments?[/QUOTE]
I would say, just different phonetic evolutions, without an apparent rule. 
For example the Mandarin "jiao" [tɕiaʊ̯] has [au] vowel in Cantonese (probably pronounced [kau]), but Mandarin "hao" [xɑʊ̯] is pronouced [hou] in Cantonese.
In my dialect (Wu) the word corresponding to Mandarin [tɕiaʊ̯] is [ko], while Mandarin [xɑʊ̯] is [hø].
So, still not the same thing as Canadian Rising.

My understanding is that Mandarin is more conservative in vowels (big change k>tɕ), while Cantonese is more conservative in consonants.

Just to be clear, my post may have confused you, because I have used "becomes" and "dialects".
But here I'm not talking about "dialect" in the English meaning (American English, British English, etc.), but rather the German meaning (Hochdeutsch, High Saxon, Low Saxon, Allemanisch, etc.).
Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min and so on are all evolutions of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese... 

While if you talk about Mandarin pronounced with heavy accent, that's another story.
In my region, older people including my grandpa would pronounce [o] instead of [ɑʊ̯], so they would pronounce "ni hao" /ni xɑʊ̯/ (hello) as [ni ho]; and pronounce [e]~[ei] instead of [aɪ̯], so they would pronounce "guo lai" /ku̯ɔ laɪ̯/ (come) as [ku le] or [ku lei].


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> But  this is by no means a requirement.  One might call the type of phonemic  vowel length to which you are referring as somewhat 'defective'—i.e.,  the distinction between the vowels is not based entirely on vowel  length.


I don't know of any language with phonemic vowel length where this "defect" does not occur. I am thinking of
Classical Greek - η vs. ε; ω (o-mega) vs. o (o-micron).
Latin - Archetype of a systematic long-short vowel system: /a:/ is low central, /i:/ is high front, /u:/ high back, /e:/ mid-high front, /o:/ mid-high back (large triangle); short vowels are shifted towards centre and lowered compared to their long counterparts except /a/ (small triangle). (Chart)
Tiberian Hebrew - The only precisely overlaying long and short vowels are Kamatz katan/gadol and even there it might be just because we don't know the difference
Arabic - difficult to say because of the simple vowel system and therefore large number of allophonic differences but still, short and long variants have different "favourite" allophones.
German - Essentially the same as the Latin system with additional complication of the umlauts. Slight qualitative difference between /a:/ and /a/ which is largely ignored by native speakers but plays a role in the perception of length.
Swedish - Very similar to German; the qualitative difference between long and short a is stronger ([ɑ:] vs. [a]). 


JuanEscritor said:


> The vowel length distinction in CR is purely allophonic, and  accompanied by a qualitative change not seen in other vowels.


That's why I think it is phonetic and not etymological.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> That's why I think it is phonetic and not etymological.


Well, that is the purpose of this thread.  If the phenomenon is phonetic, then we should find it in other languages; but the distributional pattern is exactly what we would expect if the phenomenon exists as a side-effect of GVS (and aside from Moreton and Thomas, this is a typical analysis in the literature), and so this is the best explanation if a phonetic explanation cannot be supported.

So far I have seen no support for a phonetic explanation.  Even within a single analysis the phonetic explanation usually fails to account for variations seen; for example, most AE speakers with raised /aɪ/ do not have raised /aʊ/, an issue never investigated by Moreton and Thomas.

JE


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## Youngfun

Some phoneticians, for example Luciano Canepari, denies that phonemic vowel length distinction exists in English. He considers the "long i" /Ii/ and the "long u" /ʊu/, i.e. diphthongs.


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## JuanEscritor

Youngfun said:


> Some phoneticians, for example Luciano Canepari, denies that phonemic vowel length distinction exists in English. He considers the "long i" /Ii/ and the "long u" /ʊu/, i.e. diphthongs.


Yes; but even besides that, for almost all varieties of English that exist today, vowel length is not phonemic.  What folks are calling long vowels versus short vowels are actually _qualitative_ distinctions more than _quantitative_.  In the proper phonetic context, long /ɛ/ can be equal to or longer than short /e/.  And I don't even see evidence of actual phonemicity of vowel length in AuE, since no minimal pairs have been presented.

Now it is true that because of the way English handles voicing on final consonants that vowel length still carries a reasonable functional load, but that does not make it phonemic; vowel length is non-phonemic in PDE, with rare exception (that I am taking on faith, having yet to see evidence of phonemicity).  And as you mention, most of the tense vowels in English (and in many AE dialects, this is also becoming true of lax vowels as well) are diphthongs, which only serves to further create distinction based on quality instead of quantity, a process English has been undergoing since we first have records for it.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Well, that is the purpose of this thread.  If the phenomenon is phonetic, then we should find it in other languages; but the distributional pattern is exactly what we would expect if the phenomenon exists as a side-effect of GVS (and aside from Moreton and Thomas, this is a typical analysis in the literature), and so this is the best explanation if a phonetic explanation cannot be supported.
> 
> So far I have seen no support for a phonetic explanation.  Even within a single analysis the phonetic explanation usually fails to account for variations seen; for example, most AE speakers with raised /aɪ/ do not have raised /aʊ/, an issue never investigated by Moreton and Thomas.
> 
> JE


I think it is time now for you to explain why you think an etymological approach explains the phenomenon better. I am not really seeing your point yet.


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Yes; but even besides that, for almost all varieties of English that exist today, vowel length is not phonemic.  What folks are calling long vowels versus short vowels are actually _qualitative_ distinctions more than _quantitative_.  In the proper phonetic context, long /ɛ/ can be equal to or longer than short /e/.  And I don't even see evidence of actual phonemicity of vowel length in AuE, since no minimal pairs have been presented.


_Burn-bun_. In all non-rhotic accents that have the phoneme /ʌ/, the distinction between /ə/, /ʌ/ and /ɜ:/ depends crucially on length (reduced-short-long).


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> _Burn-bun_. In all non-rhotic accents that have the phoneme /ʌ/, the distinction between /ə/, /ʌ/ and /ɜ:/ depends crucially on length (reduced-short-long).


What makes you think these vowels are of identical quality?


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> What makes you think these vowels are of identical quality?


/ɜ:/ ranges from [ə:] to [ɜ]; /ə/ from [ə] to [ɐ]; /ʌ/ occupies a space in the triangle [ɜ]-[ɐ]-[ʌ]. There is simply too much overlay to allow a stable phonemic distinction without the support of quantity. This is like /ɪ/ and /e:/ in Latin which were simply to close qualitatively to allow continued phonemic distinction when vowel length became non-phonemic and the two merged and we find Latin _dē_ became _di_ in Italian and _de_ in French.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> I think it is time now for you to explain why you think an etymological approach explains the phenomenon better. I am not really seeing your point yet.


ME /i:/ went through a stage during the GVS of something like /ʌi/ (the same diphthong seen in CR).  As the final stage of the Great Vowel Shift, this vowel underwent a further shift down to its present Standard form of /aɪ/.  But as we know, GVS acted _only on long vowels_.  

In most dialects, the rules for determining vowel length were not in their present predictable form, and so /ʌi/ was a long vowel as it had historically been when it was /i:/.  In some dialects, however, present vowel-length rules were developing (e.g., short vowels precede voiceless consonants) and so any instance of /ʌi/ that satisfied the requirements for being short became short, and so failed to undergo the final GVS shift: creating a distributional pattern of [ʌi] in short-vowel environments and [aɪ] in long-vowel environments--a distributional pattern still seen today in CR dialects.  

If you are convinced that the matter is phonetic, then your evidence consists of showing that the process is universal (short /aɪ/ becomes [ʌi] in all languages where the proper conditions are met), which might be difficult to do since even different dialects of English don't observe the CR rule even though they may make /aɪ/ phonetically shorter in specific environments.  

I'm not convinced the phonetic explanation _has _to be wrong, but I am convinced that there has not yet been any evidence presented in its favor; the GVS explanation, on the other hand, is swimming with evidence to its credit.

JE


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> /ɜ:/ ranges from [ə:] to [ɜ]; /ə/ from [ə] to [ɐ]; /ʌ/ occupies a space in the triangle [ɜ]-[ɐ]-[ʌ]. There is simply too much overlay to allow a stable phonemic distinction without the support of quantity. This is like /ɪ/ and /e:/ in Latin which were simply to close qualitatively to allow continued phonemic distinction when vowel length became non-phonemic and the two merged and we find Latin _dē_ became _di_ in Italian and _de_ in French.


Vowels can have _phonetic_ length differences without having _phonemic_ length differences.

But, I feel this is going a little off-topic with the discussion of phonemic vowel length in English.  It is enough to point out that the raised diphthongs of CR occur in environments that trigger short-vowels; that they are shorter than their unraised counterparts; and that this distributional pattern is the same for all CR dialects.

The issue is: why does CR always trigger in short-vowel environments?  Is it because, as Moreton and Thomas claim, diphthongs are 'dominated by the offglide' when short, or is it because the phenomenon is related to the historic GVS?

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> But, I feel this is going a little off-topic with the discussion of phonemic vowel length in English.


Agreed. Let's drop it.


JuanEscritor said:


> It is enough to point out that the raised diphthongs of CR occur in  environments that trigger short-vowels; that they are shorter than their  unraised counterparts; and that this distributional pattern is the same  for all CR dialects.


Ok.


JuanEscritor said:


> The issue is: why does CR always trigger in short-vowel environments?  Is it because, as Moreton and Thomas claim, diphthongs are 'dominated by the offglide' when short, or is it because the phenomenon is related to the historic GVS?


Short vowels in general have a tendency towards to centre, i.e. towards [ə]. That is what we can learn from Latin and German, I think.

If it had an etymological background then you should find similar conditions in Scots. Scots isn't really in my centre of expertise, so I am hesitant to make a statement. But I am not aware that there are any conditions for the realizations [əʊ] or [aʊ]. I think, it is simple dialectal variation.


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> ...creating a distributional pattern of [ʌi] in short-vowel environments and [aɪ] in long-vowel environments--a distributional pattern *still *seen today in CR dialects.


Your formulation suggests you assume it is a retention of an older state rather than a new development subsequent to the completion of the shift to [aɪ] in the 18th century. I wouldn't take this as a matter of course and it should be investigated.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Short vowels in general have a tendency towards to centre, i.e. towards [ə].


It's not centered; it's raised.  Both parts of the diphthong are raised in the vowel space, and the offglide of the raised diphthong is even further from the center than the offglide of the unraised diphthong. 

I have formant values that I can post this weekend.  



> If it had an etymological background then you should find similar conditions in Scots.


And we do. Look at the variation in the same phoneme that happens as part of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule.  The variation is also reported in other dialects of English (which I can list when I get to my sources).



> But I am not aware that there are any conditions for the realizations [əʊ] or [aʊ].


As the Wiki article says, the raised versions of both of these vowels occur in short-vowel environments.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> It's not centered; it's raised.


C'mon. You know perfectly well what is meant by "towards [ə]", the big spider in the _centre _of the cobweb.


JuanEscritor said:


> Both parts of the diphthong are raised in the vowel space, and the offglide of the raised diphthong is even further from the center than the offglide of the unraised diphthong.


Than we have to clarify what "version" of the CR were are talking of. The realizations are not uniform. 





> The raised variant of /aɪ/ typically becomes [ʌɪ], while the raised variant of /aʊ/ varies by dialect, with [ʌʊ] more common in the west and a fronted variant [ɛʉ] commonly heard in Central Canada.


(Wiki). The transcriptions [ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ] do not indicate rasing of the second part.


JuanEscritor said:


> I have formant values that I can post this weekend.


Would be interesting. Even more interesting would be the recordings. (I hope not your own voice, that would be a grave methodological error; the speaker should not know what you are trying to analyse, otherwise hyper-corrections are all but inevitable; but you certainly know that -- just making absolutely sure).


JuanEscritor said:


> As the Wiki article says, the raised versions of both of these vowels occur in short-vowel environments.


Thanks. That is an important clue. Do you know if the occurrence of the phenomenon in Canada is connected with immigration from Scotland?


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> C'mon. You know perfectly well what is meant by "towards [ə]", the big spider in the _centre _of the cobweb.


By _centre_ I assume you mean 'center'.  If you meant something else, then please tell us what that was.


> (Wiki). The transcriptions [ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ] do not indicate rasing of the second part.


Wiki is wrong.  I have sources on this and will post them when I find them (and the time); then I will edit the Wiki to reflect the sources (the sourcing in the article is really poor and it needs cleaning up).


> Would be interesting. Even more interesting would be the recordings.


I don't have all the recordings, but I do have numbers.  Some of this is stuff I collected as an undergrad and it has been misplaced or is incomplete.  I'll see what I can find.



> (I hope not your own voice, that would be a grave methodological error; the speaker should not know what you are trying to analyse, otherwise hyper-corrections are all but inevitable; but you certainly know that -- just making absolutely sure).


Phoneticians analyze their own speech all the time when formulating hypotheses.  I am not publishing books with the information; I think for informal analysis self-recordings are fine.  I do also have recordings of other speakers that I am eager to check for this when I get a free moment; I also have some length data scratched out on some paper from other recordings I collected a few years back.  It's informal, but will do for a forum discussion.  The information I've analyzed (from myself *and others*) conforms to the hypothesis I've laid out in this thread.

I'd have better information on this if my life revolved around linguistics as I'd like it to. 



> Do you know if the occurrence of the phenomenon in Canada is connected with immigration from Scotland?


It has been only somewhat investigated and I have read some of those investigations, but I don't remember all the conclusions.  It is certainly a possibility that these are connected, but it is by no means a requirement.  Once the distributional pattern for CR is established in a group of speakers it can spread into other dialects which are otherwise unrelated to the original one. (Indeed, this is true of all dialectical variations.)  If the variation originates from the final stages of GVS it could be impossible to find a single geographical origin (if one ever even existed).  This may be especially true given the fact that vowel length rules differ in the various CR dialects and the process of creating a CR distributional pattern from GVS involves two independent steps that could be completed to different degrees in different and unrelated dialects.

JE


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## JuanEscritor

Alxmrphi said:


> Given that you said "any vowel inserted will behave according to these rules" I imagine there must be a fairly lengthy list of examples which allows such a wide-ranging claim to be made and some of these must be able to starkly show a common history and frequency that shows a morpheme environment to be the deciding factor.


Or that I made a generalization. The number of environments that exist for fully studying this is small.

Either way, the link between vowel length and CR is borne out in several examples, such as _higher _vs. _hire_, _high school_ vs. _highschool_; the latter of each set being (potentially) raised.



> The idea does make a lot of sense, because that is quite similar to what happened with NG-coalescence in English. I'm just curious about examples that don't need to resort to non-words to provide evidence for that claim.


Non-words?  The words are unusual, but by no means 'non'.  

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> By _centre_ I assume you mean 'center'.  If you meant something else, then please tell us what that was.


Raising of [a] is a move towards the centre of vowel space. And that happens to short vowels in may languages: low vowels are raised, high vowels are lowered, front vowels move backwards and back vowels move forward ([u:] vs. [ʊ], [i:] vs. [ɪ], and, by the same logic, [a:] vs. [ɐ]).


JuanEscritor said:


> I don't have all the recordings, but I do have numbers.  Some of this is  stuff I collected as an undergrad and it has been misplaced or is  incomplete.  I'll see what I can find.


Thank you. If it is too much effort, then don't. I was just curious. There are enough samples on the net.


JuanEscritor said:


> Once the distributional pattern for CR is established in a group of  speakers it can spread into other dialects which are otherwise unrelated  to the original one.


Sure. The question was, if immigration of Scots can be traced as the _seed _of the phenomenon.


JuanEscritor said:


> Once the distributional pattern for CR is established in a group of  speakers it can spread into other dialects which are otherwise unrelated  to the original one.


I understand; we all have day-time jobs.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Raising of [a] is a move towards the centre of vowel space. And that happens to short vowels in may languages: low vowels are raised, high vowels are lowered, front vowels move backwards and back vowels move forward ([u:] vs. [ʊ], [i:] vs. [ɪ], and, by the same logic, [a:] vs. [ɐ]).


But the [ɪ] is _also_ raised, putting it at _.  One value of Moreton and Thomas's research is the extensive acoustic analysis they did on CR for /aɪ/.  They found that (1) the diphthong is raised in its entirety instead of the /a/ portion merely moving closer to /ɪ/; (2) the raised diphthong is more diphthongal than the unraised one.  Their analysis demonstrates that CR is not an occurrence of typical English vowel reduction/centering.  In the measurements I have done, I have only been able to confirm their results.




			Thank you. If it is too much effort, then don't. I was just curious.
		
Click to expand...

It's effort all right; but fun and worth the trouble!




			There are enough samples on the net.
		
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If you know of a source for these samples, a link would be greatly appreciated.




			Sure. The question was, if immigration of Scots can be traced as the seed of the phenomenon.
		
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It maybe can be, but I don't think it has been.

JE_


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## berndf

I just browsed in historical dictionaries to find the standard pronunciation (the then equivalent to RP) of these diphthongs around 1800 as a historical reference. Walker's transcription for /aɪ/ is _a2e1_ and for /aʊ/ _o3u3_. Translated into IPA this would be /ai/~/ɑi/ (can't be distinguished in his system; note that the second part is /i/ and not /ɪ/) and /ɔʊ/, respectively. There is no indication of variants. _About_ and _bound_ have the same transcription of the diphthong.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> I just browsed in historical dictionaries to find the standard pronunciation (the then equivalent to RP) of these diphthongs around 1800 as a historical reference. Walker's transcription for /aɪ/ is _a2e1_ and for /aʊ/ _o3u3_. Translated into IPA this would be /ai/~/ɑi/ (can't be distinguished in his system; note that the second part is /i/ and not /ɪ/) and /ɔʊ/, respectively. There is no indication of variants. _About_ and _bound_ have the same transcription of the diphthong.


Moreton and Thomas also transcribe the phoneme as /ai/, but they do not actually think the second element of the unraised form is /i/, as evidenced by their distinction in phonetic transcription and the formant values they collected.

Transcriptions can be tough things to trust for such specific distinctions.

JE


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## berndf

Walker explicitly says it is /i/. It is not just sloppy transcription. But that doesn't mean he's right, of course. Walker was the Jones of his days and his dictionary had some normative influence.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Walker explicitly says it is /i/. It is not just  sloppy transcription. But that doesn't mean he's right, of course.  Walker was the Jones of his days and his dictionary had some normative  influence.


Can I ask which particular text you're looking at?


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Can I ask which particular text you're looking at?


I am sorry, I thought "Walker" didn't need any explanation (like "Webster"). But maybe it is only well known among students of British English historical phonology: _John Walker: A critical pronouncing dictionary_. There are various editions available online from the 1790s until the 1850s. Here is one.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> I am sorry, I thought "Walker" didn't need any explanation (like "Webster"). But maybe it is only well known among students of British English historical phonology: _John Walker: A critical pronouncing dictionary_. There are various editions available online from the 1790s until the 1850s. Here is one.


Oh I found plenty about Mr. Walker, I just couldn't find much specifically about the transcription you mentioned.  I figured if we were working from the same text it might help the discussion.

As for his renown in the U.S., you might be right.  I think his name only came up a couple of times in all my linguistics courses.

Regarding the document in your link, I am not sure how his transcription here can be too helpful.  He doesn't seem to give us any indication as to the actual _phonetic_ values of the phonemes he has transcribed.  If I were giving a phonemic description (what dictionaries give) of my own CR speech, I would transcribe the /aɪ/ phoneme the same regardless of whether or not it was raised in a particular context.  

If we are looking to historical sources for guidance, my alma mater has an old book that discusses the raised value of the diphthong.  I don't remember exactly what it says, but I can see if the book is still around and post the relevant portion.

And now to make a list of all the stuff I need to find for this thread...

JE


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## JuanEscritor

For another interesting example of CR being conditioned by morpheme boundaries, CR dialects (typically) phonetically distinguish _I scream_ and _icecream_.  The former is [aɪskɹḭ:m], the latter [ʌiskɹḭ:m].

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Regarding the document in your link, I am not sure how his transcription here can be too helpful.  He doesn't seem to give us any indication as to the actual _phonetic_ values of the phonemes he has transcribed.  If I were giving a phonemic description (what dictionaries give) of my own CR speech, I would transcribe the /aɪ/ phoneme the same regardless of whether or not it was raised in a particular context.


Maybe, maybe not. The concepts of phonemic vs. phonetic descriptions hadn't been developed at the time.

But I gave you this information for a different reason, viz. as the reference realization in the early 19th century. It shows an asymmetry between the two diphthongs: The CR of /aʊ/ in short contexts could be conjectured to be a not a raising but an inhibited lowering in long contexts and the comparison with Scots makes this conjecture the more plausible. In the case of /aɪ/ is is somewhat less clear because we don't really know which sound Walker's _a2 _represents exactly.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Maybe, maybe not. The concepts of phonemic vs. phonetic descriptions hadn't been developed at the time.


Which is why I am hesitant to interpret his guide as being purely phonetic and having no phonemic influence, especially since we all know that people 'hear' in phonemes, not typically in phones (unless well-trained to make such distinctions).



> But I gave you this information for a different reason, viz. as the reference realization in the early 19th century. It shows an asymmetry between the two diphthongs:


I don't see the distinction you're seeing in the text you linked me to.  Walker uses one transcription for /aɪ/ and one for /aʊ/.



> The CR of /aʊ/ in short contexts could be conjectured to be a not a raising but an inhibited lowering in long contexts and the comparison with Scots makes this conjecture the more plausible.


Absolutely!  We can describe the phenomenon in either set of terms.  The only reason to prefer one over the other is based on which of the variants we take to be the phonemes and which the allophones; typical analysis sets the phonemes up as the 'elsewhere' variants and the allophones as the 'restricted' variants.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> If you know of a source for these samples, a link would be greatly appreciated.


Here and here.

I cannot detect and raising of the second part in those sample, but I haven't measured the formants yet. The raised versions sound pretty much like the corresponding German diphthongs (_w*ei*ßes H*au*s_).


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> I don't see the distinction you're seeing in the text you linked me to.  Walker uses one transcription for /aɪ/ and one for /aʊ/.


No, he transcribes the modern /aʊ/ as /ɔʊ/ which I hear here in two of the 18 samples: benzo and GordonRugg.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> No, he transcribes the modern /aʊ/ as /ɔʊ/ which I hear here in two of the 18 samples: benzo and GordonRugg.


Sorry; I see what you mean now. The 'i' diphthong is transcribed with a single symbol, so I didn't consider checking the parts of the 'ou' diphthong with their corresponding monophthongs.

Thank you for those links.  I listened to some of the samples.  It is hard to always hear raising of the off-glide, but a formant check should reveal whether it is there or not.  It is hopefully very clear that the raised version is considerably shorter than the unraised one.

If you are going to measure the formants, could you tell me how it is you will get the sound files into the measurement program?  I've never had any luck getting embedded sounds downloaded and opened in my software. 

JE

ABE: From your first link:

So while the question of who brought the pattern to southern Ontario  (and ultimately to western Canada) is hard to answer, historical  linguists do agree on one thing: that the pattern is a fossil of the  Great Vowel Shift that occurred in England in the 15th and 16th  centuries.  The Great Vowel Shift refers to the rearrangement of the  entire English vowel system from Middle to Modern English.  Prior to the  shift, words like _five_ and _house_ were pronounced [fi:v]  and [hu:s], with high vowels.   The Great Vowel Shift lowered their  vowels to their current low-vowel pronunciation, [fayv] and [haws].  It  is believed that the diphthong-raising pattern is inherited from certain  middle-English dialects in which the lowering of [i:] and [u:] stopped  at the mid-vowel height in some words.​
A little over-simplified as there is no mention of the conditioning involved (i.e., vowel-length environment), but this should support my initial claim that most linguists are in agreement as to the origin of CR.  Moreton and Thomas clearly disagree with this idea, but their hypothesis makes certain predictions that even they admit are not validated elsewhere (such as the appearance of CR in other languages).


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## JuanEscritor

Here I have analyzed a few items from a New Hampshire female, early 20s.  The words analyzed were:_ beat, bid, Rosa, bud, spot, spite _(blue)_, spied_ (red).

The length of vowels in the following word: _bit, bid, spite, spied, doubt, (en)dowed_.  Not all of these items appear on the graph.

As can be seen, the vowel in _spite_ is raised in the nucleus and trajectories toward the /i/; the vowel in _spied_ is not raised in the nucleus and trajectories toward the /ɪ/.  




Unlike the CR studied by Moreton and Thomas and the CR in my own speech, the raised diphthong is _not_ more diphthongal than the unraised one.  The length values are as follows:



*Word**Length* (sec)b*i*t0.07b*i*d0.16sp*i*te0.14sp*ie*d0.38d*oub*t0.19end*owe*d0.35

​The last two items are interesting, because Moreton and Thomas's claim that shortened diphthongs assimilate the nucleus to the offglide would predict a CR variation for this phoneme as well in this speaker given the length differences.  However, there were no appreciable differences measured, the longer diphthong has F1 and F2 values of 513,2442→565,1252, while the shorter one has values of 515,2372→578,1146.

I think this alone should be sufficient to conclude that CR is _not_ a phonetically motivated process.  Moreton and Thomas's proposed cause will work for CR dialects with raised /aʊ/, but it also predicts a raised /aʊ/ in CR dialects that _don't _have raising for this diphthong; prediction of this sort so solidly falsified can only spell invalidated for their  phonetically-motivated CR explanation.

Values from my own speech to come...


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> As can be seen, the vowel in _spite_ is raised in the nucleus and trajectories toward the /i/; the vowel in _spied_ is not raised in the nucleus and trajectories toward the /ɪ/.


Sorry, I can't see any raising of /I/ in the graph, only of /a/. The /I/ is fronted but not raised.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Sorry, I can't see any raising of /I/ in the graph, only of /a/. The /I/  is fronted but not raised.


I never claimed it was raised.  You  will see in my own graph that there is definite raising of the  offglide.  For our NH female the offglide of the raised diphthong is  brought into the _ vowel space by fronting; in either case, the  historical value of the diphthong is produced: [əi] (or [ʌi]).

JE_


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## berndf

Well, you did ("the vowel in _spite_ is *raised* in the nucleus *and trajectories*"), but never mind, your point is understood now.


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## berndf

I am still not entirely satisfied with the explanation that CR is nothing but an inhibited 18th/19th century lowering. If I can trust my ears, the typical CR /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ realizations are [ɐɪ] (or [ɐi]; the endpoint is somewhere in between _ and [ɪ], I don't think this matters) and [ɐʊ]. This is not the original diphthongs. The diphthong of house was and in some dialects still is [ɔʊ]. Also, the conditions are not the same. In CR time is not raised while in Scots it is. The realization is somewhere in between [teim], [tɛim] and [təim] and the diphthong is is markedly different from [ɐi]. The discussion is maybe complicated by the fact that the transcriptions use only [ə] and [ʌ] and don't differentiate them from [ɐ]. I suspect this is because in English monophthongs [ə] and [ɐ] and not phonemically distinguished in unstressed syllables and [ʌ] and [ɐ] are not distinguished in stressed syllables.

It is equally conceivable that there was a raising from [a] to [ɐ] in dialects that had already completed the lowering to [a]. This would explain better why both raised diphthongs start at the same point while historical versions of the diphthong had different nuclei. I am also not convinced by your counter-argument that one should find the same allophonic distribution between [ai] and [ɐi] in other languages as the allophonic length-variation in front of voiced and unvoiced consonants is an English idiosyncrasy (English has final obstruent de-voicing without phonemic neutralization and the distinction is maintained, not only but mainly, through length: short consonant preceded by a long vowel=phonemically voiced; long consonant preceded by a short vowel=phonemically unvoiced) and it would be difficult to find exactly the same conditions in other languages.

I'm not saying you are wrong. I am just not (yet) convinced._


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> I am still not entirely satisfied with the explanation that CR is nothing but an inhibited 18th/19th century lowering. If I can trust my ears, the typical CR /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ realizations are [ɐɪ] (or [ɐi]; the endpoint is somewhere in between _ and [ɪ], I don't think this matters) and [ɐʊ]. This is not the original diphthongs. The diphthong of house was and in some dialects still is [ɔʊ]._


_I don't think we can make much of the similarities of the presently raised form and the historical form. It is interesting that the form has remained, but that is about it.  Since the variation is a productive process, the forms of each diphthong are somewhat free to vary as they please.  It is not the case that we have the historical form preserved in certain lexemes; instead it is the case that we have a constraint created from the historical interplay of vowel length and the GVS which restricts a raised variant of the diphthong to short vowel environments and an unraised variant to long-vowel environments.

Out of curiosity, can I ask what your source is for the historical values of these diphthongs?




			Also, the conditions are not the same. In CR time is not raised while in Scots it is.
		
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Because the raising is conditioned by vowel length, and vowel length rules vary from dialect to dialect (and even speaker to speaker).  Chambers discusses these variations in his articles on the subject.  One variation I recall off the top of my head is some speakers having raising in bisexual and some having no raising.  These variations relate to how the informants place morpheme boundaries and the ways morpheme boundaries interplay with pre-voiceless shortening to trigger or not trigger the raising.

Even for SVLR there are speaker-to-speaker exceptions.




			The discussion is maybe complicated by the fact that the transcriptions use only [ə] and [ʌ] and don't differentiate them from [ɐ]. I suspect this is because in English monophthongs [ə] and [ɐ] and not phonemically distinguished in unstressed syllables and [ʌ] and [ɐ] are not distinguished in stressed syllables.
		
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Honestly, unless the specific values are being mentioned, I would take the IPA representations to be a matter of convenience or standardization rather than statements of actual phonetic quality.




			It is equally conceivable that there was a raising from [a] to [ɐ] in dialects that had already completed the lowering to [a]. This would explain better why both raised diphthongs start at the same point while historical versions of the diphthong had different nuclei.
		
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But the process is productive, and so it is subject to the same linguistic pressures as all other phonological matters; even if there was an historical difference, that difference could have been leveled by analogy of one vowel with the other.  Also, I have not looked into the /aʊ/ raising too much, so I cannot say for sure what similarities the diphthongs possess.  According to Wiki, though, SVLR's diphthongs do not have the same nucleus.




			I am also not convinced by your counter-argument that one should find the same allophonic distribution between [ai] and [ɐi] in other languages as the allophonic length-variation in front of voiced and unvoiced consonants is an English idiosyncrasy
		
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But I am not talking about voiced/unvoiced.  I am talking about long and short vowels which is by no means an 'English idiosyncrasy'.  Moreton and Thomas further claim that the reason for CR is the tendency of the speakers to assimilate the nucleus and offglide in the shorter environment.  But if this is the case and CR speakers really do have this tendency, shouldn't we expect the tendency to show elsewhere?  Yet /aɪ/ is the only diphthong raised for most Americans who have raising.




			I'm not saying you are wrong. I am just not (yet) convinced.
		
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Let me know what I can do to help. 

JE_


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> I don't think we can make much of the similarities of the presently  raised form and the historical form. It is interesting that the form has  remained, but that is about it.  Since the variation is a productive  process, the forms of each diphthong are somewhat free to vary as they  please.  It is not the case that we have the historical _form _preserved  in certain lexemes; instead it is the case that we have a constraint  created from the historical interplay of vowel length and the GVS which  restricts a raised variant of the diphthong to short vowel environments  and an unraised variant to long-vowel environments.


At this point of abstraction the etymological explanation seems just to far fetched. If you compare the diphthongs in in Scots times and out and in North-American dialects with CR _five_ and _stout_ the diphthongs really have little more in common that that they don't start with a fully open [a]. For the theory to be testable, one would have to explain why and how they varied. The similarities seem too vague to me to be able to decide, if it is an etymological or a phonetic phenomenon that occurred after completion of the lowering. The fact that the raised CR versions share the same nucleus points rather to the latter possibility and is therefore not insignificant.



JuanEscritor said:


> But I am not talking about voiced/unvoiced.


It is the prime cause of the phenomenon.



JuanEscritor said:


> I am talking about long and short vowels which is by no means an 'English idiosyncrasy'.


Oh yes! A "short diphthong" is in most languages a contradiction in terms.



JuanEscritor said:


> Moreton and Thomas further claim that the reason for CR is the tendency of the speakers to assimilate the nucleus and offglide in the shorter environment.  But if this is the case and CR speakers really _do_ have this tendency, shouldn't we expect the tendency to show elsewhere?  Yet /aɪ/ is the only diphthong raised for most Americans who have raising.


You know certainly more about North-American dialect variation but in my experience, most people who say _fife_ [fʌɪf] also say _stout_ [stʌʊt] and those two are the only English diphthong that have such a long trajectory.

As the long-short opposition (phonemic or phonetic) exists in most other languages only for monophthongs, the closest resemblance to the the claim of a shortened trajectory is that in some languages short vowels are less distant to one another than their long counterparts and in reduced environments, all vowels collapse in a single point, [ə] (or maybe two, like the English Schwa/Schwi or the German e-Schwa/a-Schwa).



JuanEscritor said:


> Let me know what I can do to help.


A theory that makes more precise prediction why the raised diphthongs are realized the way they are might help. As it appears to me now, there are two theories that have their plausibilities and implausibilities but no crucial experiment at hand to decide between the two. And, worse, they are not even in contradiction: Let me construct an ad-hoc theory that blends the two, just for the sake of the argument: Let's assume a group of English colonists with completely lowered /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ diphthongs. Their Scottish neighbours pronounce the vowels with a considerably shorter trajectory and for the reason Moreton and Thomas state, the English settlers find it convenient to pronounce the diphthong closer to how the Scots say them in short environments. Or another ad-hoc theory: CR is strongest in the "prairie provinces" (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Eastern Alberta) and that is the area with the highest density of Canadians of German descent and the raised variants of the diphthongs are almost exactly how their German counterparts are pronounced (_Pf*ei*fe=p*i*pe, H*au*s=h*ou*se_). So, rather than Scottish it could be German influence. When it is so easy to produce ad-hoc theories then I find it difficult to decide just based on the modern phenomenon without actual historical records when and where and how CR first occurred.


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## JuanEscritor

First, thank you for such great discussion!  You're always pushing me to find more information and learn more.



berndf said:


> At this point of abstraction the etymological explanation seems just to far fetched. If you compare the diphthongs in in Scots times and out and in North-American dialects with CR _five_ and _stout_ the diphthongs really have little more in common that that they don't start with a fully open [a].


Because once the variation exists, it becomes a productive process and dialect splitting allows the process to develop differently in different regions.

There have been suggestions that for some the variation is moving toward being phonemic as other processes neutralize differences that otherwise made CR predictable (flapping, for example, creates homophones from _rider_ [ɹaɪɾɚ] and _writer_ [ɹaɪɾɚ] which are distinct for CR speakers as [ɹaɪɾɚ] and [ɹʌiɾɚ], respectively).  I think phonemicization is a far way off, especially in my own dialect, but it's an interesting avenue of research.



> For the theory to be testable, one would have to explain why and how they varied. The similarities seem too vague to me to be able to decide, if it is an etymological or a phonetic phenomenon that occurred after completion of the lowering.


If you are at the point where you feel the evidence fits either explanation, then the scientific conclusion is the one that is most parsimonious of the two, which is GVS, as it involves a single conditioned lowering and no further assumptions about a subsequent raising.  (The other variations are a separate matter, I believe.)



> The fact that the raised CR versions share the same nucleus points rather to the latter possibility and is therefore not insignificant.


I agree fully that the variation has been subjected to non-GVS pressures; but this is to be expected since once the variation was established (however that happened) it was subject to the same pressures as any phonological variation.



> It is the prime cause of the phenomenon.


The prime cause is vowel length; voicing is a factor in vowel-length, but vowel length is the direct cause that links all CR variations



> A "short diphthong" is in most languages a contradiction in terms.


Which makes a find tough but hopefully not impossible! 



> You know certainly more about North-American dialect variation but in my experience, most people who say _fife_ [fʌɪf] also say _stout_ [stʌʊt] and those two are the only English diphthong that have such a long trajectory.


Based on my experience, and based on the literature, raising of /aɪ/ is rather common in AE (and unnoticeable by most), while raising of /aʊ/ is not common and a clear marker of a non-standard dialect, even to people who raise the other diphthong.  

I also think /ɔɪ/ has a pretty good trajectory on it, yet no comparable variation exists with this diphthong.  The only place we find variation is where it is consistent with an historical GVS explanation.



> A theory that makes more precise prediction why the raised diphthongs are realized the way they are might help.


The GVS theory makes very precise predictions: the raised diphthong will appear in short-vowel environments; the presence of one raising doesn't necessitate the raising of others; because it is based on vowel length, the only way to predict where the raising will occur is by understanding a speaker's vowel-length rules; given the time lapse since the origin of the variation, further phonological processes acting on the diphthongs is not only accepted but expected and purely consistent with modern phonological and dialectical theory.



> Let's assume a group of English colonists with completely lowered /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ diphthongs. Their Scottish neighbours pronounce the vowels with a considerably shorter trajectory and for the reason Moreton and Thomas state, the English settlers find it convenient to pronounce the diphthong closer to how the Scots say them in short environments.


Well I am not saying that just because the CR variation arose with the interplay of vowel length and GVS that all instances of it are directly descended from this.  Once the variation exists it exists as a dialectical feature capable of spreading like any other dialectical feature.



> Or another ad-hoc theory: CR is strongest in the "prairie provinces" (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Eastern Alberta) and that is the area with the highest density of Canadians of German descent and the raised variants of the diphthongs are almost exactly how their German counterparts are pronounced. So, rather than Scottish it could be German influence.


Which doesn't account for why the variation doesn't occur regularly in both diphthongs; especially in the U.S. where German settlement was also strong (my ancestors were German and immigrated less than 100 years ago, and the city I live in had large German settlements).  



> When it is so easy to produce ad-hoc theories then I find it difficult to decide just based on the modern phenomenon without actual historical records when and where and how CR first occurred.


Ad-hoc theories have the disadvantage of being ad-hoc.  The GVS theory is the most parsimonious of the theories put forward; the hypothetical theories you've mentioned are much less parsimonious and would even become more so as they attempted to address the CR variation in other dialects (the Fens, for example).

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> First, thank you for such great discussion!  You're always pushing me to find more information and learn more.


Yes, thank you too. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about a phenomenon I did#t know much about before.



JuanEscritor said:


> The prime cause is vowel length...


... and the cause for this length variation is preservation of the phonemicity of the voiced/unvoiced opposition of the following final obstruent (as in _eyes_ /aɪz/ vs. _ice _/aɪs/) though they are phonetically de-voiced in most dialects.

This reminds me of a somewhat similar situation is Austrian/Bavarian: This dialect group has never developed the /s/-/z/ opposition of modern German yet, like Standard German, lost the original difference between <ß> and <s>, an orthographic difference used in standard German to disambiguate /z/-/s/ in certain cases. The non-voicing of standard German /z/ is also present for many standard speakers not only for dialect speakers. Yet, the phonemic differentiation between _der wei*s*e Mann_ /deɐ vaɪ*z*e man/ = _the wise man_ and _der wei*ß*e Mann_ /deɐ vaɪ*s*e man/ = _the white man_ is not lost for southern standard speakers although they don't voice the <s> is _weise_. The characteristic (or at least one of the characteristics; there is some debate among researchers) that ensure the phonemic contrast is length (if you can read German, this thread might be interesting for you). I cannot say whether this also modifies the preceding diphthong but it might be interesting to investigate.



JuanEscritor said:


> The GVS theory makes very precise predictions


But they aren't more precise than those made by the rivaling theory and that is the problem.



JuanEscritor said:


> Which doesn't account for why the variation doesn't occur regularly in both diphthongs; especially in the U.S. where German settlement was also strong (my ancestors were German and immigrated less than 100 years ago, and the city I live in had large German settlements).


Hmmm. I brought up this theory only to show how easy it is to fabricate plausible sounding counter-theories. But maybe there is something to itrolleyes: The shift /u:/>/aʊ/ was completed long before the first German settlers came to North American while the second part of the shift /i:/>/ɛj/>/aɪ/ was only completed in the early 19th century (in some dialects never). That's why /aɪ/ is spelled <ei> (historically also <ey>; the <y> represents an <i>-<j> ligature) and not <ai>. This could explain the asymmetry in some areas South of the US-Canadian boarder (I am not familiar with your dialect except for listening to the Prairie Home Companion on a local English language radio station in Geneva; in the US, I know the phenomenon only from New England and there I haven't noticed any asymmetry between the two diphthongs).


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> and the cause for this length variation is preservation of the phonemicity of the voiced/unvoiced opposition of the following final obstruent (as in _eyes_ /aɪz/ vs. _ice _/aɪs/) though they are phonetically de-voiced in most dialects.


But the raising also occurs before voiced consonants as well, because the rules for determining vowel-length are not as simple as whether the following sound is voiced or not.  Sometimes there are even (apparent) lexical exceptions; for example, I have no raising in _tide_ but raising in _tidal_ (making it homophonous with _title_).  

There are some theories on this, but I think the most sensible one is that some words that are polymorphemic in the standard dialect are actually monomorphemic in other dialects (or even just learned by individual speakers as being monomorphemic) and thus the distribution of CR may vary even in the same phonetic environments.  The example I gave with _tidal_ fits the previous rule I presented if we take the word as being monomorphemic (which I think is a good assumption in my case, since I first became aware of the raising in this word and its peculiarity when, only a few days ago, I made the connection that the word _tidal_ was derived from _tide_).  The only change we must make is to generalize some things:

V → v/'(Cn)—dC̩

This actually works as a pretty nice general rule for my dialect.  It is also clearly productive; the U.S. Vice President's name, for example, is pronounced with a raised diphthong, as it adheres perfectly to this standard: /'baɪdn̩/ → ['bʌidn̩] (with optional glottalization of /d/).



> This reminds me of a somewhat similar situation is Austrian/Bavarian: This dialect group has never developed the /s/-/z/ opposition of modern German yet, like Standard German, lost the original difference between <ß> and <s>, an orthographic difference used in standard German to disambiguate /z/-/s/ in certain cases. The non-voicing of standard German /z/ is also present for many standard speakers not only for dialect speakers. Yet, the phonemic differentiation between _der wei*s*e Mann_ /deɐ vaɪ*z*e man/ = _the wise man_ and _der wei*ß*e Mann_ /deɐ vaɪ*s*e man/ = _the white man_ is not lost for southern standard speakers although they don't voice the <s> is _weise_. The characteristic (or at least one of the characteristics; there is some debate among researchers) that ensure the phonemic contrast is length (if you can read German, this thread might be interesting for you). I cannot say whether this also modifies the preceding diphthong but it might be interesting to investigate.


Now some recordings of this would be worth their digital weight in gold!  But I thought you said the German diphthong was already raised relative to the Standard English one; or is this a phonetic process that is not phonemic?



> I know the phenomenon only from New England and there I haven't noticed any asymmetry between the two diphthongs).


Well, the speaker whose data I presented above was from New Hampshire, and she only had raising in the one diphthong not the other.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> But the raising also occurs before voiced consonants as well, because the rules for determining vowel-length are not as simple as whether the following sound is voiced or not.  Sometimes there are even (apparent) lexical exceptions; for example, I have no raising in _tide_ but raising in _tidal_ (making it homophonous with _title_).
> 
> There are some theories on this, but I think the most sensible one is that some words that are polymorphemic in the standard dialect are actually monomorphemic in other dialects (or even just learned by individual speakers as being monomorphemic) and thus the distribution of CR may vary even in the same phonetic environments.  The example I gave with _tidal_ fits the previous rule I presented if we take the word as being monomorphemic (which I think is a good assumption in my case, since I first became aware of the raising in this word and its peculiarity when, only a few days ago, I made the connection that the word _tidal_ was derived from _tide_).  The only change we must make is to generalize some things:
> 
> V → v/'(Cn)—dC̩
> 
> This actually works as a pretty nice general rule for my dialect.  It is also clearly productive; the U.S. Vice President's name, for example, is pronounced with a raised diphthong, as it adheres perfectly to this standard: /'baɪdn̩/ → ['bʌidn̩] (with optional glottalization of /d/).


But isn't this just a secondary effect of the intervocalic d/t merger in AE? In BE, where the two are not merged (_title_ = [tʰaɪtʰ(ə)l] vs. _tidal_ = [tʰaɪt(ə)l]~[tʰaɪd(ə)l]), the vowel in _tidal_ is longer than that in _title_. EDIT: Maybe not. I listened to a few samples and found no significant length difference between the vowels of these words. These two words are not in danger of merging in BE anyway, so no length-differentiation in needed.



JuanEscritor said:


> Now some recordings of this would be worth their digital weight in gold!


I'll try to do a few recordings when I am in Austria for New Year. Members of my wife's family are quite used to me making phonetic experiments with them.





JuanEscritor said:


> But I thought you said the German diphthong was already raised relative to the Standard English one; or is this a phonetic process that is not phonemic?


Germans are generally not aware their short and long <a>s are qualitatively distinct. They hear in English _b*u*t_ essentially the same vowel as in _f*a*ther_, just shorter. In BE, this quantity difference really exists while in AE it is often an illusion but the mere fact that the <a> is fully open makes it sound long to a German, even if it isn't. And the diphthong is phonemically /aɪ/ and not /a:ɪ/. The realization in Austrian would be interesting but unfortunately, /aɪ/ is monphthongized in urban dialects ([a:] in mid-sized cities and [ɛ:] in Viennese) and in rural dialects it is completely different: _eins_ = [oɐns]).


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## JuanEscritor

I've considered testing a few more words to verify that vowel length is the real underlying motivation for CR.

_preschool _(school before school)
_free school_ (school not paid for)
_highschool_ (secondary school)
_high school_ (school in the clouds)
_write _(to test for CR)
_ride_ (to test for CR)

Item one is a single word while item two is two words (i.e., there is a salient morpheme boundary in the second item but not in the first).  The analysis will focus on the vowel of the first syllable.  The hypothesis that CR is triggered by vowel length predicts that: (1)The /i/ in _preschool_ will be shorter than the /i/ in _free school_; (2) the /aɪ/ in _highschool_ (when analyzed as a single word, and provided (1) is true) will be shorter than the /aɪ/ in _high school_; (3) _highschool_ will have raising but _high school_ will not provided that (4) CR is present as determined by the production of _write_ and _ride_.

If (2) and (1) are true; then (3) must be true as a prediction that CR is triggered by vowel length if (4) CR is present.   Or:

4 → ((1 → 2) → 3)

I just did a quick check of this on a co-worker; I was just listening and not recording, but I believe that the vowels in _preschool_ and _free school_ were the same length and there was raising in both _highschool_ and _high school_.  Without a long-vowel environment to compare this to, it doesn't tell us much except to confirm that CR always occurs in the same vowel-length environment (if (1) were true but not (3), that would be a problem with the prediction, but I found that (1) was false, (2) was false, and (3) was false; with (4) being true, this makes the conditional as a whole true, but only logically so and not empirically so).

The hypothesis was not contradicted, but it was also not validated by these data.

Some real measurements might tell a clearer story though (I hope!).

JE


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## berndf

A word of caution: Stressed syllables are always longer than unstressed ones. Comparing absolute vowel lengths of vowels in syllables with different stress level is usually meaningless.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> But isn't this just a secondary effect of the intervocalic d/t merger in AE?


The homophony of _tidal_ and _title_, yes.  But the CR is a different issue.  It is just that the CR plus tapping creates some homophones; it also eliminates some other homophones.  The overall effects are interesting, but not specifically relevant to CR.



> In BE, where the two are not merged (_title_ = [tʰaɪtʰ(ə)l] vs. _tidal_ = [tʰaɪt(ə)l]~[tʰaɪd(ə)l]), the vowel in _tidal_ is longer than that in _title_. EDIT: Maybe not. I listened to a few samples and found no significant length difference between the vowels of these words.


I had a bunch of things I was going to say about this, but I think that because BE is not a CR dialect and is far removed from Minnesota English, comparing these things in BE probably won't tell us much about CR in AE.

But I might be wrong...



> I'll try to do a few recordings when I am in Austria for New Year. Members of my wife's family are quite used to me making phonetic experiments with them.


 



> Germans are generally not aware their short and long <a>s are qualitatively distinct. They hear in English _b*u*t_ essentially the same vowel as in _f*a*ther_, just shorter. In BE, this quantity difference really exists while in AE it is often an illusion but the mere fact that the <a> is fully open makes it sound long to a German, even if it isn't.


Well, _bot_ and _but_ are two different words.  And there is clearly a different vowel in _father _and _mother_ (the latter having the same as in _but_).

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Well, _bot_ and _but_ are two different words.  And there is clearly a different vowel in _father _and _mother_ (the latter having the same as in _but_).


Yes, of course. In AE there is not necessarily a length difference between the vowels in _bot _and _but _but Germans have the illusion of a longer vowel in _bot_ than in _but _even if the speaker pronounces them the same length. In German, quantity and quality are interrelated in a way speakers aren't always concious of. Germans hear a long <a> in _father_ and a short <a> in _mother_ and don't realize the quality difference. I remember when I learned IPA (in Germany we learn it in 6th form (age of 10) in grammar school) I found it so funny, they used such a strange symbol ([ʌ]) for a "normal <a> sound".

By the ways: You are probably aware that the vowels in _bot _and _father _are very different in BE (the variety we learn at school). The vowel in_ bot_ is short and rounded (a lowered but not fully low [ɔ]), the vowel in _father_ long and not rounded (fully low).


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> By the ways: You are probably aware that the vowels in _bot _and _father _are very different in BE (the variety we learn at school). The vowel in_ bot_ is short and rounded (a lowered but not fully low [ɔ]), the vowel in _father_ long and not rounded (fully low).


Of course.  I believe this is also a (disappearing) feature of some New England dialects as well.

As for your comments on German, those observations don't apply to English speakers' perceptions of English; this is because English doesn't handle vowel length as anything other than allophonic and predictable variation (except AuE and some other dialects, it would appear)—distinguishing vowels, instead, purely on their phonetic qualities.

Where Germans hear differences in quantity but not quality, English-speakers hear differences in quality but not quantity; English and German don't handle vowel length the same way, and this goes back to the discussion of vowel length which we already agreed was off-topic, but I figured I'd point out the relationship for clarity.

JE


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## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> Where Germans hear differences in quantity but not quality, English-speakers hear differences in quality but not quantity...


Again, not so in this case. Speakers perceive the difference in quality and mistake it for quantity.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> Again, not so in this case. Speakers perceive the difference in quality and mistake it for quantity.


That's what I meant: the same acoustic data are interpreted differently by speakers of different languages.

JE


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## Dan2

A main theme of this thread is whether Canadian Raising (CR) is "etymological" (a remnant of the English Great Vowel Shift, "GVS") or "phonetic".  JE explicitly takes the first position and rejects the second, but has said things that leave me uncertain exactly what those positions are.  May I try to state the two hypotheses clearly and ask you, JE, to confirm that my understanding is correct?  

The GVS hypothesis (for clarity I'll state it in terms of "write" and "ride",  but of course these are just examples of large classes of words):
At one point in history the originally-[i:] vowel of "ride" had progressed all the way to the diphthong [aI], while that of "write" had proceeded only as far as [ʌI].  The modern CR dialects are direct descendants of this dialect, with no further relevant developments.  In other dialects, "write" followed "ride" and became [aI]; these gave rise to the modern non-CR dialects.

The phonetic hypothesis:
Earlier stages of the GVS are irrelevant. CR speakers (like non-CR speakers) have only one basic diphthong, call it /aI/, but for "phonetic" reasons raise it to [ʌI] in "short" environments.


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## JuanEscritor

Dan2 said:


> A main theme of this thread is whether Canadian Raising (CR) is "etymological" (a remnant of the English Great Vowel Shift, "GVS") or "phonetic".  JE explicitly takes the first position and rejects the second, but has said things that leave me uncertain exactly what those positions are.  May I try to state the two hypotheses clearly and ask you, JE, to confirm that my understanding is correct?
> 
> The GVS hypothesis (for clarity I'll state it in terms of "write" and "ride",  but of course these are just examples of large classes of words):
> At one point in history the originally-[i:] vowel of "ride" had progressed all the way to the diphthong [aI], while that of "write" had proceeded only as far as [ʌI].  The modern CR dialects are direct descendants of this dialect, with no further relevant developments.  In other dialects, "write" followed "ride" and became [aI]; these gave rise to the modern non-CR dialects.


The [i:] in pre-GVS English did not develop into its modern [aɪ] reflex in one step, but went through several stages; one of those stages was [ʌi] (or [əi]).  At the final stages of the shift (see berndf's posts for a timeline), this vowel lowered further to [aɪ]. 

The GVS hypothesis for CR proposes that between the shift from [ʌi] to [aɪ] a change in vowel-length determining rules occurred in some dialects.  While other dialects preserved [ʌi] as a long diphthong, some dialects shortened it (and other vowels) in certain morpho-phonemic environments.  GVS acted only on long vowels. So this re-figuring of vowel-length rules inhibited the GVS from acting on this diphthong in those cases where it was short, and so only the long varieties of [ʌi] were lowered to [aɪ], creating the modern distribution we see today of [ʌi] in short-vowel environments and [aɪ] in longer-vowel environments, even as rules for determining vowel-length have changed with time and from one dialect to another.  

The steps are like this:


Long /i/ becomes long /ʌi/ 
Vowel length rules make some long /ʌi/ short 
Long /ʌi/ becomes /aɪ/, short /ʌi/ remains [ʌi] 
The difference is not enough for force a phonemic split, and so an allophonic variation persists restricting [ʌi] to short-vowel environments and leaving [aɪ] in the other environments 
 

I hope this helps put some order into the thread. 

JE


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## berndf

The opposite theory is that the shift had been completed before CR began and the phenomenon is an innovation.

Since groups of speakers from different dialect areas contributed to today's NAm English dialects, may hybrid theories are possible.


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## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> The opposite theory is that the shift had been completed before CR began and the phenomenon is an innovation.
> 
> Since groups of speakers from different dialect areas contributed to today's NAm English dialects, may hybrid theories are possible.


But no phonetic motivation has been put forth to explain why NAmE speakers of the past were somehow incapable of producing the standard variety of the diphthong and had to resort to using the raised variety (which is typically _more diphthongal_ than the standard, as Moreton and Thomas showed).  There just doesn't seem to be a good phonetic motivator behind the variation if we dismiss the historical link.

Why adopt the distribution they adopted and why was that distribution adopted everywhere and how did it end up being the exact same distribution we would expect to find with an historical explanation?

Also, the hybrid theories fail to explain the presence of CR in geographically unrelated dialects (SSE, the English of the Fens, etc.) which _are linked_ by having undergone, to various degrees, the stages of the GVS.

I just find the historical explanation so perfectly fitting with the evidence and so fully explanatory; I think any other explanation would have to at least equal it in terms of conformity to the evidence and explanatory power, and I believe the phonetic explanations are lacking heavily in these departments.

Also, to tie this all in with the original topic of the thread, there has been no evidence yet presented of a CR-like variation in any other language besides English.

JE


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## Dan2

JuanEscritor said:


> But no phonetic motivation has been put forth to explain why NAmE speakers of the past were somehow incapable of producing the standard variety of the diphthong and had to resort to using the raised variety (which is typically _more diphthongal_ than the standard


What phonetic motivation is there for why late Middle English speakers "were somehow incapable of producing" the simple found-in-almost-every-language vowel _ and "had to resort" to the unusual diphthong [əɪ]?  Why were Chicagoans incapable of producing [æ], replacing it with the diphthong [ɛə]?  Why do businessmen wear ties even tho they're uncomfortable?

My point of course is that at best we can hope for a theory that ranks phonological changes in terms of likelihood.  But, just as we can't predict next year's fashions, we can't predict with certainty what phonological changes will in fact take place, and while many changes are simplifications, many seem to make things more difficult on phonetic grounds (which is why it's so difficult to imitate other people's dialects accurately).

However... I do think you do make one very good point: It seems well established that what started as  and ended as [aɪ] passed thru [ʌɪ].  So if we observe [ʌɪ] today, the simpler hypothesis is that this [ʌɪ] is a remnant of earlier [ʌɪ], rather than that [ʌɪ] went to [aɪ] and then returned to [ʌɪ] (tho this sort of thing does happen).



JuanEscritor said:



			Why adopt the distribution they adopted and why *was *that distribution  adopted everywhere
		
Click to expand...

"wasn't"?
I think that's a fair question, but is it really any different from asking why cognate [i:] in Norwegian didn't undergo the GVS, or why Los Angeles [æ] hasn't been replaced with [ɛə]?  This is precisely why there's dialect variation in the first place: one group makes a change that another group doesn't.  Even if the change has a well-established phonetic motivation (vowel nasalization before nasal cons, final obstruent devoicing, etc.), it still isn't the case that all groups that are "candidates" for the change will adopt it.

Earlier in the thread, speaking to those who would take the phonetic approach, you said,


JuanEscritor said:



			If you are convinced that the matter is    phonetic, then your evidence consists of showing that the process is    universal (short /aɪ/ becomes [ʌi] in all languages where the proper    conditions are met)
		
Click to expand...

Again, no matter how phonetically well-motivated a change is, we can't expect that it will happen in all dialects, right?_


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## JuanEscritor

Dan2 said:


> What phonetic motivation is there for why late Middle English speakers "were somehow incapable of producing" the simple found-in-almost-every-language vowel _ and "had to resort" to the unusual diphthong [əɪ]?  Why were Chicagoans incapable of producing [æ], replacing it with the diphthong [ɛə]?  Why do businessmen wear ties even tho they're uncomfortable?_


_First; neck ties rock.

Second, I have never argued that the GVS was pushed forward by some sort of phonetic motivation.  

Third, my point was that the theory of phonetic motivation put forward by Moreton and Thomas involves the explanation that short-vowel environments favor the raised diphthong by a process of 'asymmetric assimilation' (which their own data refute—of which they seem, at least partially, aware).  Moreton and Thomas's explanation for CR is on the same lines as explaining why the ⟨n⟩ in tenth is usually dental; in fact they are aware that their hypothesis has rather 'universal implications' and discuss the problem in brief about no other languages having CR and how this is a strong point in favor of the GVS—English-specific—origin and against their more broadly-applicable 'asymmetric assimilation'.




			"wasn't"?
		
Click to expand...

No; I meant 'was'.  In all CR dialects the distribution of the raised/unraised diphthongs is identical: the raised one is in the short environment and the unraised one in the long/elsewhere environment.  Even when the dialects have different rules for determining vowel length (e.g, AE and SSE), the distribution is still the same relative to vowel length.  There is either very strong phonetic motivation for this pattern, or the distribution has historical origins.




			it still isn't the case that all groups that are "candidates" for the change will adopt it.
		
Click to expand...

Yet all dialects that were candidates for the short-vowel distribution of [ʌi] (by virtue of having this sound alongside [aɪ]) adopted that exact same distributional pattern.   No CR dialects adopted a different pattern.

JE_


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## Dan2

JuanEscritor said:


> First; neck ties rock.


There's evidence they restrict blood flow to the brain...


JuanEscritor said:


> Second, I have never argued that the GVS was pushed forward by some sort of phonetic motivation.


Of course not.  But you wrote,


JuanEscritor said:


> But no phonetic motivation has been put  forth to explain why NAmE speakers of the past were somehow incapable of  producing the standard variety of the diphthong and had to resort to  using the raised variety (which is typically _more diphthongal_ than the standard


You  appear to be saying here, "Why would they replace the standard  diphthong with the raised one?  That seems an unexpected or random thing  to do."  Isn't that your point?
I replied, mimicking the structure of your argument,


Dan2 said:


> What phonetic motivation is there for why late  Middle English speakers "were somehow incapable of producing" the simple  found-in-almost-every-language vowel _ and "had to resort" to the  unusual diphthong [əɪ]? Why were Chicagoans incapable of producing [æ], replacing it with the diphthong [ɛə]?_


_
But in each case they did!  My point: stuff happens.  Strange phonetic changes take place.  Some are a lot stranger than raising [a] to [ʌ].

By the way, I would claim that the "write" words tend to be shorter than the corresponding "ride" words even for those American dialects that don't have CR.  Are we agreed on that point?  That's related to the was/wasn't confusion.  I thought your point was, "if Moreton thinks raising is an direct phonetic consequence of shortness, why isn't  short [aI] raised in all American dialects?"

(I hope it's clear that I'm not arguing against your GVS position.  I just feel that some points have not been clearly made.)_


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## JuanEscritor

Dan2 said:


> You  appear to be saying here, "Why would they replace the standard  diphthong with the raised one?  That seems an unexpected or random thing  to do."  Isn't that your point?


No, my point with this is that it contradicts the phonetic argument; there is nothing phonetically 'better' about having [ʌi] in the short-vowel environment; the vowel is more diphthongal, requiring even _more_ _tongue movement_ in even _less time_.  If there is a phonetic motivation, it certainly isn't related to ease of articulation.  



> By the way, I would claim that the "write" words tend to be shorter than the corresponding "ride" words even for those American dialects that _don't_ have CR.  Are we agreed on that point?


Absolutely.  Phonetically shortened vowels before voiceless consonants is an almost universal feature of English.  



> That's related to the was/wasn't confusion.  I thought your point was, "if Moreton thinks raising is an direct phonetic consequence of shortness, why isn't  short [aI] raised in _all_ American dialects?"


After reading the paper, what did you think of their argument?  I, honestly, couldn't make out what their position was by the end; it was clear that the evidence contradicted their initial hypothesis (that there is an assimilation of the nucleus to the offglide) but they never otherwise came to a clear conclusion other than to say that CR was not native to the Cincinnati area.  They were also very certain, for whatever reason, that CR could not be a side effect of GVS and must, somehow, be phonetically motivated.



> (I hope it's clear that I'm not arguing against your GVS position.  I just feel that some points have not been clearly made.)


That's fine.  If there is anything you want restated or clarified, I'll be glad to oblige.

JE


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