This paper examines the status of two vowel mergers in a rural area of the United States. The front-lax merger has traditionally been a southern US merger, and the low-back merger has traditionally been a northern or western US merger. In areas of West Virginia, the same speakers demonstrate both. This geographic overlap of both mergers reinforces the idea that West Virginia is a transitional dialect region. In addition, the traditionally distinct dialect regions of West Virginia are finding increased unity in this overlap of mergers.
2025. Appalachian Englishes. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes, ► pp. 1 ff.
Hasty, J. Daniel & Becky Childs
2024. You Ain’t from Here, Are You? Subregional Variation and Identification among Young Appalachians. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage 99:3 ► pp. 330 ff.
Austen, Martha
2020. Production and perception of the Pin-Penmerger. Journal of Linguistic Geography 8:2 ► pp. 115 ff.
Boberg, Charles
2020. Diva Diction. American Speech 95:4 ► pp. 441 ff.
Boberg, Charles
2021. Accent in North American Film and Television,
Cramer, Jennifer
2018. Perceptions of Appalachian English in Kentucky. Journal of Appalachian Studies 24:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Lee, Sinae
2018. Patterns of the Mainstream Sound Change in a Liminal Region: Low Back Merger in Washington DC. Journal of English Linguistics 46:4 ► pp. 267 ff.
Eberhardt, Maeve
2008. The Low-Back Merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh. American Speech 83:3 ► pp. 284 ff.
Eberhardt, Maeve
2009. The Sociolinguistics of Ethnicity in Pittsburgh. Language and Linguistics Compass 3:6 ► pp. 1443 ff.
Hazen, Kirk
2008. (ING): A VERNACULAR BASELINE FOR ENGLISH IN APPALACHIA. American Speech 83:2 ► pp. 116 ff.
Hazen, Kirk
2018. The Contested Southernness of Appalachia. American Speech 93:3-4 ► pp. 374 ff.
Hazen, Kirk & Sarah Hamilton
2008. A Dialect Turned Inside Out. Journal of English Linguistics 36:2 ► pp. 105 ff.
[no author supplied]
2013. Reference Guide for Varieties of English. In A Dictionary of Varieties of English, ► pp. 363 ff.
[no author supplied]
2018. References. The Publication of the American Dialect Society 103:1 ► pp. 191 ff.
[no author supplied]
2023. References. In Sounds of English Worldwide, ► pp. 354 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.
