Vowels NORTH, FORCE

The historical distinction between these vowels has been lost in New York speech as is increasingly the case in other American dialects. Indeed, the Mid-Atlantic region was one of the areas in which the Linguistic Atlas researchers recorded this merger, a fact that suggests the merger has characterized New York speech since at least the late 19^th century. The merged vowel is often recorded as  but recent acoustic evidence suggests it may be closer to [oə] or even higher. Labov (1994) suggests it forms the second stage in a chain shift spurred by the backing and raising of START.