Revisiting raising: Examining multiple acoustic dimensions of diphthong-raising in South Louisiana

The so-called “Canadian Raising” of /ai/ and /aʊ/’s nucleus has been increasingly documented in geographically disparate North American English varieties. We aim to determine the status of this raising in the southern state of Louisiana. While /aʊ/-raising appears to be a change in progress in New Orleans (Carmichael, 2020), little documentation of /ai/ exists. Via Qualtrics, 60 Louisianans were recorded reading 51 words with /aɪ/ and 37 words with /aʊ/ in various phonological and morphological environments. A preliminary analysis of 27 speakers’ data has shown that if raising is defined as at least 60 Hz difference in F1 of vowel nucleus in prevoiceless versus prevoiced environments (Labov et al., 2006), /aɪ/ raising could be observed in 74% of the speaker sample and /aʊ/ raising only in 7% of the sample. This suggests that while some phonetic / phonological conditioning for raising is evident in the data, the 60-Hz cut off may not capture a change in progress well. We will additionally analyze F2 in the vowel nucleus and diphthong duration in a larger, more demographically balanced corpus of 60 Louisianans. This study will add to modern descriptions of southern U.S. English and incipient vowel shifts.