Vowels PRICE, MOUTH

The diphthongs in these items exhibit the tendency toward nucleus-glide differentiation, a pattern common in many varieties of English. The nucleus of the back-gliding vowel in MOUTH is fronted while that of the front-gliding PRICE is backed. The sociolinguistic evidence (Labov 1966) suggests that both of these developments are active changes. The fronted nucleus in MOUTH and the backed nucleus in PRICE are more common among younger speakers, women, and the working and lower middle classes.