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=== History of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift ===
[[William Labov]] et al.'s ''[[Atlas of North American English]]'' (2006) presents the first historical understanding of the order in which the Inland North's vowels shifted. Speakers around the Great Lakes began to pronounce the [[phonological history of English short A|short ''a'']] sound, {{IPA|/æ/}} as in {{Sc2|TRAP}}, as more of a [[diphthong]] and with a higher starting point in the mouth, causing the same word to sound more like "tray-ap" or "tray-up"; Labov et al. assume that this began by the middle of the 19th century.{{sfnp|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|pp=192, 195}} After roughly a century following this first vowel change—general {{IPA|/æ/}} raising—the region's speakers, around the 1960s, then began to use the newly opened vowel space, previously occupied by {{IPA|/æ/}}, for {{IPA|/ɑ/}} (as in {{sc2|LOT}} and {{sc2|PALM}}); therefore, words like ''bot'', ''gosh'', or ''lock'' came to be pronounced with the tongue extended farther forward, thus making these words sound more like how ''bat'', ''gash'', and ''lack'' sound in dialects without the shift. These two vowel changes were first recognized and reported in 1967.{{sfnp|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|p=190}} While these were certainly the first two vowel shifts of this accent, and Labov et al. assume that {{IPA|/æ/}} raising occurred first, they also admit that the specifics of time and place are unclear.{{sfnp|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|p=191}} In fact, [[Real-time sociolinguistics|real-time evidence]] of a small number of Chicagoans born between 1890 and 1920 suggests that {{IPA|/ɑ/}} fronting occurred first, starting by 1900 at the latest, and was followed by {{IPA|/æ/}} raising sometime in the 1920s.<ref name="McCarthy">McCarthy, Corrine (2010) "[
During the 1960s, several more vowels followed suit in rapid succession, each filling in the space left by the last, including the lowering of {{IPA|/ɔ/}} as in {{sc2|THOUGHT}}, the backing and lowering of {{IPA|/ɛ/}} as in {{sc2|DRESS}}, the backing of {{IPA|/ʌ/}} as in {{sc2|STRUT}} (first reported in 1986),<ref>Labov, William (2008). "[http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/PowerPoints/PowerPoints.html Yankee Cultural Imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift]". PowerPoint presentation for paper given at Yale University, October 20, 2008. Online at University of Pennsylvania. Slide 94.</ref> and the backing and lowering of {{IPA|/ɪ/}} as in {{Sc2|KIT}}, often but not always in that exact order. Altogether, this constitutes the Northern Cities Shift, identified by linguists as such in 1972.<ref name="discover">{{cite web |last=Sedivy |first=Julie |date=March 28, 2012 |title=Votes and Vowels: A Changing Accent Shows How Language Parallels Politics |url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/03/28/votes-and-vowels-a-changing-accent-shows-how-language-parallels-politics/#.VqT3prerTIU |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160125232232/http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/03/28/votes-and-vowels-a-changing-accent-shows-how-language-parallels-politics/#.VqauQS-l1pQ |archive-date=January 25, 2016 |access-date=January 24, 2016 |publisher=Discover}}</ref>
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