Price-prize Canadian raising (PPCR) is explored as a recent or in-progress phonological split in various northern US locations (e.g., Vance 1987, Fruehwald 2007). PPCR appears unreported for New York City English (NYCE),... [ view full abstract ]
Price-prize Canadian raising (PPCR) is explored as a recent or in-progress phonological split in various northern US locations (e.g., Vance 1987, Fruehwald 2007). PPCR appears unreported for New York City English (NYCE), although Kaye (2012) describes an analogous long-established split with prize backing replacing price raising:
price
prize
Traditional Canadian Raising
[ʌɪ]
[aɪ]
NYCE Canadian Raising (Kaye)
[aɪ]
[ɑɪ]
Kaye connects this split systemically with the NYCE lot-palm distinction arguing that not only do the phonetic outcomes of prize and palm lengthening and backing match but so do the conditioning environments. Kaye’s unified analysis suggests that both contrasts should co-occur. So, as lot/palm undergo merger among younger White NYCE speakers (Newman 2016), prize-backing should also be lost. Similarly, those many non-Whites that preserve a lot/palm contrast (Newman 2014) should back prize. We address these questions with data from read-alouds containing 37 potential tokens each of price/prize and of 40 of lot/palm from 35 diverse participants in the Corpus of New York City English (CoNYCE). Vowels were measured at 35% of duration using DARLA vowel extraction and plotted with NORM.
- All participants except 2 (of 6) East Asians and 3 (of 4) South Asians show a price-prize distinction.
- prices were always raised in split cases.
- 3—all older Whites with distinct palm—also showed prize backing.
Consequently, NYCE can be added to the northern US varieties with PPCR, and PPCR joins the increasingly nasal short-A and simplifying low back system (see e.g., Newman 2014) as specific local features losing ground to larger regional patterns. More specific findings include:
- Although prize backing coincides with palm retention among Whites, palm was retained by most African Americans or Latinos leaving any systemic connection unclear.
- Although many Asians, particularly East Asians split price from prize, fewer do than other racialized groups. South Asians are least likely to raise price. In conclusion, PPCR contributes to a number of trends found for NYCE such as the emergence of cross-ethnolinguistic commonalities co-existing with inter-ethnic distinctions and the evolution from strong local dialectal distinctiveness to joining wider regional patterns.
