This paper discusses the possibility of reversal of phonological mergers, dealing in particular with the "NURSE-NORTH Merger" in Tyneside English. That this merger appears to have been reversed without any obvious hypercorrection (Wells 1982: 375) is problematic in light of Labov's Principle of the Irreversibility of Mergers (Labov 1994: 311), which predicts that mergers cannot be reversed successfully. This paper, which examines the progress of this "reversal" in detail, suggests that mergers can be reversed without obvious hypercorrection, and that the process is more complicated than has previously been appreciated. This kind of change is problematic not only for the Principle, but also for models of phonology which insist upon a sharp distinction between lexical and phonetic change.
Labov, W. (1994) Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1: Internal Factors. Oxford and Cambridge (MA): Blackwell Publishers.
Wells, J. (1982) Accents of English, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.