phonological patterns LOT, CLOTH, PALM, THOUGHT

The low-back vowels are historically unstable in StAmE. The  merger is said by Labov to be characteristic of the speech of the West, but instability in these vowels also characterizes Eastern New England (in which one also hears fronted pronunciations, as [a]) and Western Pennsylvania. “Merger” may be too strong a term here; there is some evidence that words historically with /a/ retain it in some areas (so that a pronunciation with  might be recognized as “different”), while words historically with  more freely show alternation within the  range. The  pronunciation in palm may be related to the American spelling pronunciation that inserts unhistorical [l], to yield . ODP represents words of the historical /a/ class with [a], and words of the historical  class with both sounds .