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r-coloured vowels
NURSE first, third, occur, serve
lettER gather, standard, persist
historically:
• short vowels fell together as /ə/ before /r/
• [ə] and [r] coalesced as a single rhotacized vowel
• (in non-rhotic accents) the rhotacization was lost
The THOUGHT vowel/ɔ/
• Variation in quality: generally opener than in BrE
• In the CLOTH set as well as the THOUGHT set
• Subject to an on-going merger with /ɑ/ LOT ("the low back merger") dawn-don, hawk-hock
• Those who have not merged /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ have lexical variability in on, fog, sorry, wash
The TRAP-BATH vowel/æ/
With regional, social-stylistic and positional variation, subject to raising and tensing to [ɛː ~ eə ~ iə]
jazz
The LOT vowel/ɑ/
• Subject to fronting to [a] ("Northern Cities Shift"), which protects it from the Low Back Merger found west of the Mississippi, in western Pennsylvania, in Canada etc.
… also, the lowering and centralization of /ɪ/ (KIT) and /ɛ/ (DRESS)
TRAP LOT
THOUGHT
KIT
DRESSSTRUT