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51-442: The Low-Back-Merger Shift is a chain shift of vowel sounds found in several dialects of North American English , beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century and most significantly involving the low back merger accompanied by the lowering and backing of the front lax vowels: / æ / , / ɛ / , and / ɪ / (in words like TRAP , DRESS , and KIT respectively). The back and downward movement of all

102-501: A chain from Bedouin Hijazi Arabic involves vowel raising and deletion: In nonfinal open syllables, /a/ raises to /i/ while /i/ in the same position is deleted. Synchronic chain shifts may be circular. An example of this is Xiamen tone or Taiwanese tone sandhi : The contour tones are lowered to a lower tone, and the lowest tone (21) circles back to the highest tone (53). Synchronic chain shifts are an example of

153-639: A feature of both shifts, is considered prestigious. Nesbitt et al. (2019) say that the Canadian shift may be replacing the NCS. Jacewicz (2011) found the shift in parts of Wisconsin, where, despite the NCS, /æ/ is lowered and backed, and /ɑ/ raises, backs, and diphthongizes to approach /ɔ/ , although, like in Columbus and in Cowlitz County, the merger is not actually complete for most of the speakers in

204-502: A higher place of articulation , so that the pronunciation of geese changed from /ge:s/ to /giːs/ and broken from /brɔːken/ to /broːkən/ . The high vowels /iː/ and /uː/ became diphthongs (for example, mice changed from /miːs/ to /maɪs/ ), and the low back vowel /aː/ was fronted , causing name to change from /naːmə/ to /neːm/ . The Great Vowel Shift occurred over centuries, and not all varieties of English were affected in

255-536: A separate phenomenon in most North American English dialects: the NORTH–FORCE merger , in which this vowel before /r/ can be phonemicized as the GOAT vowel, transcribed together variously thus as /or/ or /oʊr/ . Legend: unrounded  •  rounded The shift causes the vowel sound in words like cot , nod and stock and the vowel sound in words like caught , gnawed and stalk to merge into

306-499: A set of chain shifts collectively termed lenition , which affected stop consonants between vowels: In this case, each sound became weaker (or more "lenited"). It is also possible for chain shifts to occur synchronically, within the phonology of a language as it exists at a single point in time. Nzebi (or Njebi), a Bantu language of Gabon , has the following chain shift, triggered morphophonologically by certain tense/aspect suffixes: Examples follow: Another example of

357-486: A single phoneme ; therefore the pairs cot and caught , stock and stalk , nod and gnawed become perfect homophones , and shock and talk , for example, become perfect rhymes . The cot – caught merger is completed in the following dialects: Nowhere is the shift more complex than in North American English. The presence of the merger and its absence are both found in many different regions of

408-472: A specific /ɑ/ – /ɔ/ merger before /n/ but not before /t/ (or other consonants) is in effect, so that Don and dawn are homophonous, but cot and caught are not. In this case, a distinct vowel shift (which overlaps with the cot – caught merger for all speakers who have indeed completed the cot – caught merger) is taking place, identified as the Don – dawn merger . According to Labov, Ash, and Boberg,

459-497: Is better explained as an effect of Scots-Irish settlement, but in eastern New England, and perhaps the American West, as an internal structural development. Canadian linguist Charles Boberg considers the issue unresolved. A third theory has been used to explain the merger's appearance specifically in northeastern Pennsylvania: an influx of Polish- and other Slavic-language speakers whose learner English failed to maintain

510-543: Is certain to preserve the contrast for all speakers in these regions. Some speakers in all three regions, particularly younger ones, are beginning to exhibit the merger despite the fact that each region's phonetics should theoretically block it. African American Vernacular English accents have traditionally resisted the cot – caught merger, with LOT pronounced [ɑ̈] and THOUGHT traditionally pronounced [ɒɔ] , though now often [ɒ~ɔə] . Early 2000s research has shown that this resistance may continue to be reinforced by

561-439: Is familiar from its prominence in plays such as George Bernard Shaw 's Pygmalion (and the related musical My Fair Lady ): Many chain shifts are vowel shifts , because many sets of vowels are naturally arranged on a multi-value scale (e.g. vowel height or frontness). However, chain shifts can also occur in consonants. A famous example of such a shift is the well-known First Germanic Sound Shift or Grimm's Law , in which

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612-664: Is inhibited by a following nasal, but it is not in Vancouver. However, scholars disagree on the behaviour of /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ : Due to the Canadian Shift, the short- a and the short- o are shifted in opposite directions to that of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift , found across the border in the Inland Northern U.S. and Western New England , which is causing these two dialects to diverge:

663-609: Is not known which phonemes changed first during the Great Vowel Shift; many scholars believe the high vowels such as /i:/ started the shift, but some suggest that the low vowels , such as /aː/ , may have shifted first. During the Great Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries, all of the long vowels of Middle English, which correspond to tense vowels in Modern English, shifted pronunciation. The changes can be summarized as follows: Most vowels shifted to

714-432: Is undergoing fronting without lowering, while still remaining distinct from the space occupied by /ɛ/ . At the same time, historical /ɒ/ (the vowel in "lot") is merged with the /ɑ/ class, which is raising and backing towards /ɔ/ , such that the two are merged or "close". This allows a "free space" for the retraction of /æ/ , which is also suggested as a possibility for Western U.S. dialects by Boberg (2005). In Columbus,

765-584: The father – bother merger ). The merger is typical of most Indian , Canadian , and Scottish English dialects as well as some Irish and U.S. English dialects. An additional vowel merger, the father – bother merger, which spread through North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has resulted today in a three-way merger in which most Canadian and many U.S. accents have no vowel difference in words like PALM /ɑ/ , LOT /ɒ/ , and THOUGHT /ɔ/ . However, /ɔr/ as in NORTH participates in

816-640: The Proto-Indo-European voiceless stop consonants became fricatives , the plain voiced stops became voiceless, and the breathy voiced stops became plain voiced: Another is the High German consonant shift which separated Old High German from other West Germanic dialects such as Old English , Old Frisian , and Old Saxon : The Romance languages to the north and west of central Italy (e.g. French , Spanish , Portuguese , Catalan and various northern Italian languages) are known for

867-509: The 1990s, younger speakers in Kansas , Nebraska , and the Dakotas exhibited the merger while speakers older than 40 typically did not. The 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey, in which subjects did not necessarily grow up in the place they identified as the source of their dialect features, indicates that there are speakers of both merging and contrast-preserving accents throughout the country, though

918-511: The Canadian shift closely resembles the version found by Boberg (2005) in Montreal, where /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are either merged or "close", and /æ/ , /ɛ/ , and /ɪ/ show retraction of the nucleus without much lowering (with /æ/ also showing "rising diphthong" behavior). However, the retraction of /ɪ/ was not found among all speakers and is more mild among the speakers that do show it than the retraction of /ɛ/ among those speakers. Additionally,

969-713: The Canadian short- a is very similar in quality to the Inland Northern short- o . For example, the production [map] would be recognized as map in Canada but mop in the Inland North. In the United States, the cot-caught merger is widespread across many regions of the United States, particularly in the Midland and West , but speakers with the merger are often not affected by the shift, possibly due to

1020-738: The Maritimes. Fifty years later, the merger "was already more established in Canada" than in its two U.S. places of origin. In Canadian English, further westward spread was completed more quickly than in English of the United States. Two traditional theories of the merger's origins have been longstanding in linguistics: one group of scholars argues for an independent North American development, while others argue for contact-induced language change via Scots-Irish or Scottish immigrants to North America. In fact, both theories may be true but for different regions. The merger's appearance in western Pennsylvania

1071-530: The North American continent, where it has been studied in greatest depth, and in both urban and rural environments. The symbols traditionally used to transcribe the vowels in the words cot and caught as spoken in American English are ⟨ ɑ ⟩ and ⟨ ɔ ⟩, respectively, although their precise phonetic values may vary, as does the phonetic value of the merged vowel in

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1122-642: The actual low back merger. The California Vowel Shift in progress in California English contains features similar to the Canadian Shift, including the lowering/retraction of the front lax vowels. However, the retraction of /æ/ has happened in California even though the Californian /ɑ/ may be more centralized and not as rounded as the Canadian /ɒ/ , leading some scholars suggest that the two phenomena are distinct, while others suggest that it

1173-463: The basic isoglosses are almost identical to those revealed by Labov's 1996 telephone survey. Both surveys indicate that, as of the 1990s, approximately 60% of American English speakers preserved the contrast, while approximately 40% merged the phonemes. Further complicating matters are speakers who merge the phonemes in some contexts but not others, or merge them when the words are spoken unstressed or casually but not when they are stressed. Speakers with

1224-715: The distinction. Outside North America, another dialect featuring the merger is Scottish English, where the merged vowel has a quality around [ɔ̞]. Like in New England English, the cot – caught merger occurred without the father – bother merger . Therefore, speakers still retain the distinction between /a/ in PALM and /ɔ/ in LOT–THOUGHT . The merger is also quite prevalent in Indian English , possibly due to contact with Scottish English. In particular,

1275-405: The example above, the chain shift would be a pull chain if /i:/ changed to /aɪ/ first, opening up a space at the position of [i] , which /e:/ then moved to fill. A push chain is a chain shift in which the phoneme at the "end" of the chain moves first: in this example, if /aː/ moved toward [eː] , a "crowding" effect would be created and /e:/ would thus move toward [i] , and so forth. It

1326-406: The fact that the merged vowel is less rounded, less back and slightly lower than the Canadian vowel. This means that there is less space for the retraction of the vowel /æ/ , which is a key feature of the Canadian shift. However, there are many regions of the United States where the Canadian shift can be observed, and this is often more closely linked to the raising or retraction of /ɑ/ , rather than

1377-482: The first evidence of the merger (or its initial conditions) comes from western Pennsylvania as far back as the data shows. From there, it entered Upper Canada (what is now Ontario ). In the mid-19th century, the merger also independently began in eastern New England, possibly influencing the Canadian Maritimes , though the merger is in evidence as early as the 1830s in both regions of Canada: Ontario and

1428-473: The first two stages of the Northern Cities Shift (NCS) move /æ/ and /ɑ/ in the exact opposite direction of the Canadian Shift. However, the NCS is gaining stigma among younger speakers, which can trigger the lowering of /æ/ and the backing of /ɑ/ . In fact, Savage et al. (2015) found that, while the raising of /æ/ and fronting of /ɑ/ are stigmatized, the lowering and backing of /ɛ/ ,

1479-651: The front lax and tense vowels that is part of the Southern shift , retracted /ɪ/ , /ɛ/ , and /æ/ , and have a near merger /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ . In New York City, there is evidence of the lowering and retraction of /æ/ (except before nasals), /ɛ/ , and /ɪ/ particularly among younger non-white speakers. This is despite the fact that Traditional New York City English has an opaque split of the /æ/ phoneme ; younger speakers are increasingly lowering /æ/ before voiceless fricatives and voiceless stops and raising it before all nasals. This also correlates with retraction of /ɑ/ and

1530-715: The front lax vowels was first noted as distinguishing certain California English speakers in 1987, and it was soon known by linguists as the California Vowel Shift . Then, it came to distinguish certain Canadian English speakers in a 1995 study, now known in that variety as the Canadian Shift ; today, it helps define Standard Canadian English . The California and Canadian Shifts were initially reported as two separate phenomena, but

1581-581: The fronting of LOT , linked through a chain shift of vowels to the raising of the TRAP , DRESS , and perhaps KIT vowels. This chain shift is called the "African American Shift". However, there is still evidence of AAVE speakers picking up the cot – caught merger in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania, in Charleston , South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, and in parts of California. In North America,

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1632-460: The low back merger is not complete for any of the speakers in the study. In the ANAE, the speech of Atlanta, Georgia is classified as a typologically Midland dialect because it had already lacked the monopthongization of /aɪ/ . However, it appears that the monopthongization of /aɪ/ was a feature of Atlantan speech in the early 20th century, and that much younger speakers have undone the reversal of

1683-545: The lowering of /ɔ/ , but not necessarily with the low back merger. Chain shift A well-known example is the Great Vowel Shift , which was a chain shift that affected all of the long vowels in Middle English . The changes to the front vowels may be summarized as follows: A drag chain or pull chain is a chain shift in which the phoneme at the "leading" edge of the chain changes first. In

1734-594: The merger in North America is most strongly resisted in three regions: In the three American regions above, sociolinguists have studied three phonetic shifts that can explain their resistance to the merger. The first is the fronting of /ɑ/ found in the Inland North; speakers advance the LOT vowel /ɑ/ as far as the cardinal [a] (the open front unrounded vowel ), thus allowing the THOUGHT vowel /ɔ/ to lower into

1785-632: The merger in northeastern New England still maintain a phonemic distinction between a fronted and unrounded /ɑ/ (phonetically [ ä ] ) and a back and usually rounded /ɔ/ (phonetically [ ɒ ] ), because in northeastern New England (unlike in Canada and the Western United States), the cot – caught merger occurred without the father – bother merger. Thus, although northeastern New Englanders pronounce both cot and caught as [kɒt] , they pronounce cart as [kät] . Labov et al. also reveal that, for about 15% of respondents,

1836-609: The most well-known is the Northern Cities Vowel Shift , which is largely confined to the " Inland North " region of the United States. Other examples in North America are the Pittsburgh vowel shift , Southern vowel shift (in the Southern United States ), the California vowel shift and the Canadian Shift (though the last two may be the same). In England, the Cockney vowel shift among working-class Londoners

1887-640: The next vowel along moves into it. Thus, the short a /æ/ retracts from a near-low front position to a low central position, with a quality similar to the vowel heard in Northern England [a] . The retraction of /æ/ was independently observed in Vancouver and is more advanced for Ontarians and women than for people from the Prairies or Atlantic Canada and men. /æ/ also retracts more before /l/ than other consonants. In Toronto, /æ/-retraction

1938-443: The outcome of low back merger-like behavior is more like the California shift outcome noted above than the rounded variant found in most of Canada. In Pittsburgh, another region where the cot-caught merger is prevalent, the mouth vowel /aʊ/ is usually a monophthong that fills the lower central space, which prevents retracting. However, as /aʊ/ monophthongization declines, some younger speakers are retracting /æ/ . As noted above,

1989-674: The phonetic environment of [ɑ] without any merger taking place. The second situation is the raising of the THOUGHT vowel /ɔ/ found in the New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore accents, in which the vowel is raised and diphthongized to [ɔə⁓oə] , or, less commonly, [ʊə] , thus keeping that vowel notably distinct from the LOT vowel /ɑ/ . The third situation occurs in the South, in which vowel breaking results in /ɔ/ being pronounced as upgliding [ɒʊ] , keeping it distinct from /ɑ/ . None of these three phonetic shifts, however,

2040-484: The regions where the merger occurs. Even without taking into account the mobility of the American population, the distribution of the merger is still complex; there are pockets of speakers with the merger in areas that lack it, and vice versa. There are areas where the merger has only partially occurred, or is in a state of transition. For example, based on research directed by William Labov (using telephone surveys) in

2091-437: The same basic pattern was next documented among some younger varieties of Western New England English , Western American English , Pacific Northwest English , and Midland American English , all in speakers born after 1980. Linguists have proposed possible relationships between the low back merger and the similarly structured shifts in these regional dialects, though no unifying hypothesis is dominantly agreed upon yet. Assuming

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2142-526: The same ways. For example, some speakers in Scotland still pronounce house similarly to its sound in Middle English before the shift, as [hu(ː)s] . A chain shift may affect only one regional dialect of a language, or it may begin in a particular regional dialect and then expand beyond the region in which it originated. A number of recent regional chain shifts have occurred in English. Perhaps

2193-685: The shift is widespread among younger speakers throughout the West. Stanley (2020) found evidence of the shift in Cowlitz County, Washington , where the formant trajectories of /æ/ , /ɛ/ , and /ɪ/ flattened, causing the onset of /æ/ to lower and slightly retract, the onset of /ɛ/ to lower and retract, and the onset of /ɪ/ to retract. However, the speakers in the study tended to pronounce /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ "close" but distinct, with /ɔ/ being further back and more diphthongal. Furthermore, this state of near merger had persisted for all 4 generations in

2244-517: The short front vowels are also attested in other English dialects globally as of 21st-century research, including modern Received Pronunciation , Indian English , Hiberno-English , South African English , and Australian English (the last two dialects traditionally defined by a chain shift moving in the opposite direction of the Low-Back-Merger Shift). These changes outside of North America particularly intrigue linguists as they lack

2295-596: The similar chain shifts found in Canada and various parts of the U.S. have a single common origin, a variety of names have been proposed for this trans-regional chain shift which, besides the low-back-merger shift , include the Third Dialect Shift , Elsewhere Shift , Short Front Vowel Shift , and North American Shift . Aside from the Low-Back-Merger Shift characterizing these North American varieties, similar, though not identical, shifts to

2346-431: The study, and the lowering of /æ/ is more linked with the raising of /ɑ/ . In addition, /ɛ/ is lowered and backed which is in alignment with both the NCS and the Canadian shift. Jacewicz (2011) also found evidence for the shift in parts of North Carolina, where the vowels /ɪ/ , /ɛ/ , and /æ/ lower and monophthongize, undoing the Southern U.S. Shift . /ɑ/ raises, backs and diphthongizes to approach /ɔ/ , although

2397-435: The study. An explanation for this is that while the merger itself was not the trigger for the shift, the backing of /ɑ/ leading to the near-merger of /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ was the trigger. Durian (2008) found evidence of the Canadian shift in the vowel systems of men born in 1965 and later in Columbus, Ohio. This is located in the U.S. Midland. The Midland dialect is a mix of Northern and Southern dialect features. In Columbus, /ʌ/

2448-408: The theoretical problem of phonological opacity . Although easily accounted for in a derivational rule-based phonology, its analysis in standard parallel Optimality Theory is problematic. Cot-caught merger The cot – caught merger , also known as the LOT–THOUGHT merger or low back merger , is a sound change present in some dialects of English where speakers do not distinguish

2499-542: The vowel phonemes in words like cot versus caught . Cot and caught (along with bot and bought , pond and pawned , etc.) is an example of a minimal pair that is lost as a result of this sound change. The phonemes involved in the cot – caught merger, the low back vowels , are typically represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ or, in North America, as /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ (except in regions that do not have

2550-425: The vowel configuration presumed to initiate this shift: the low back merger. The Canadian Shift involves the lowering of the tongue in the front lax vowels /æ/ (the short- a of trap ), /ɛ/ (the short- e of dress ), and /ɪ/ (the short- i of kit ). It is triggered by the cot–caught merger : /ɑ/ (as in cot ) and /ɔ/ (as in caught ) merge as [ɒ] , a low back rounded vowel . As each space opens up,

2601-528: Was backed "just enough" to allow the shift to happen. Within speakers, the retraction of /æ/ is more correlated with the raising of /ɑ/ than with the low back merger. The Atlas of North American English finds that, in the Western United States, one out of every four speakers exhibits the Canadian Shift, as defined quantitatively by Labov et al. based on the formant values for /æ/ , /ɑ/ , and /ɛ/ . More recent data, however, suggests that

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