Variation and change
Phonological variation and change
Canadian English: a phonologically distinctive variety?
Canadian English has been conventionally classified as belonging to the relatively uniform North American ‘Third Dialect’ area, which also encompasses New England, western Pennsylvania and the western United States. Research to date, however, has identified a number of vocalic features which, if not entirely distinctive, are at least emblematic of Canadian English.
A recently documented vowel shift that has had important ramifications regarding the place of Canadian English within the overall taxonomy of North American dialects concerns the retraction and lowering of /ae/ in the direction of central open /a/, and the lowering of /1/ to /3/, and /s/ to the slot occupied by /a3/, as schematized in Figure 6.1 (Clarke et al. 1995: 212).
The motivation for what is now known as the Canadian Shift, reported to be spear- headed by females (Clarke et al. 1995: 216), appears to reside in the low—back merger (shared with a few American regional varieties) of /D/ and /o:/, resulting in homophonous pairs such as cot and caught, don and dawn, etc.