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Response to Berkson, Davis, & Strickler, ‘What does incipient /ay/-raising look like?’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Josef Fruehwald
Josef Fruehwald*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
[josef.frueh@ed.ac.uk]
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Abstract

Berkson, Davis, and Strickler (2017) provide an invaluable report on incipient /ay/-raising in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Their data suggest that /ay/-raising conditioned strictly by phonetic voicelessness is a possible early stage in the development of /ay/-raising. This raises a particularly vexing question of why /ay/-raising has gone on to be conditioned by phonological voicing in all North American varieties for which its interaction with /t, d/ flapping has been examined. It suggests that the process of phonologization reorganizes the distribution of phonetic variants, rather than simply discretizing phonetic precursors.

Keywords

Canadian raisingphonologizationincipient sound changeflappingmetrical foot

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Language , Volume 93 , Issue 3 , September 2017, pp. e192 - e197
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Copyright © 2019 Linguistic Society of America

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