The North American English vowel system -- Principles of chain shifting and mergers -- Sampling and field methods -- Methods of acoustic analysis -- The construction of isoglosses -- The restoration of post-vocalic /r/ -- Nearly completed mergers -- North American mergers in progress -- The vowels of North American English -- The dialects of North American English -- The fronting of back upgliding vowels -- The short-a and short-o configurations -- The North -- Canada -- New England -- New york City and the mid-Atlantic states -- The South -- The Midland -- The West -- Lexical and grammatical maps -- African-Americans -- The findings of North American English : an overview.