The unconditioned merger of the low back vowels and the variety of realizations found for the low front vowel have been noted as leading to greater distinctiveness across U.S. English regional dialects. The extent to which the movements of these vowels are related has repeatedly been of interest to dialectology as well as phonological theory. Here, examining production and perception data from speaker-listeners across three major regions of the United States, the relationships among these low vowels within and across regions are investigated. Participants provided speech samples and took part in a vowel identification task, judging vowels along a continuum from /æ/ to /ɑ/. Results of acoustic analysis and statistical analysis of the perception results indicate that a structural relationship between /æ/ and /ɑ/ is maintained across regions and that listeners’ own degree of low back vowel merger predicts their perception of the boundary between /æ/ and /ɑ/.

中文翻译：

---

美国英语低元音之间的区域关系：来自生产和感知的证据

低后元音的无条件合并和低前元音发现的各种实现已被注意到导致美国英语地方方言更大的独特性。这些元音运动的相关程度一再引起方言学和语音学理论的兴趣。在这里，检查来自美国三个主要地区的说话者和听众的生产和感知数据，调查这些低元音在区域内和跨区域之间的关系。参与者提供语音样本并参与元音识别任务，沿着从 /æ/ 到 /ɑ/ 的连续体判断元音。