The Lax Vowel Subsystem in Canadian English Revisited

Abstract

This study provides the first wide-scale, apparent time, instrumental description of the Canadian Shift in mainstream Toronto English. The Toronto data suggest that the general pattern of the shift—which affects the front lax vowels /ɪ, ɛ, æ/—involves simultaneous retraction and lowering. Findings also indicate that retraction, instead of lowering, has been the primary direction of more recent change, although little, if any, change has occurred in the speech of Torontonians since the WWII era. In light of these findings, a unified account of the Canadian Shift across speech communities in Canada is proposed that re-interprets the seemingly disparate results of previous studies.