Introduction: what are mergers and can they be reversed?

Abstract

In his foundational book on accents of English, Wells (1982: 374–5) describes the apparent merger of the vowels in the nurse and north lexical sets in Tyneside English (‘Geordie’) as follows: ‘In the broadest Geordie the lexical set nurse is merged with north , /ɔː/: work [wɔːk], first [fɔːst], shirt [ʃɔːt] (= short ).’