studies have revealed a trend of recession in most features of the accent, especially among younger speakers from middle-class or higher backgrounds. Documented loss of New York City accent features includes the loss of the coil–curl merger (now almost completely extinct), non-rhoticity, and the extremely raised long vowel (as in talk, cough, or law). Researchers proposed that the motivation behind these recessive trends is the stigmatization against the typical New York City accent since the mid-1900s as being associated with a poorer or working-class background, often also corresponding with particular ethnic identities. While earlier projects detected trends of emphasizing New York City accents as part of a process of social identification, recent researches attribute the loss of typical accent features to in-group ethnic distancing. In other words, many of the young generations of ethnic groups who formerly were the most representative speakers of the accent are currently avoiding its features in order to not stand out socially or ethnically. Pronunciation The pronunciation of New York City English, most popularly acknowledged by the term New York accent, is readily noticed and stereotyped, garnering considerable attention in American culture. Some distinctive phonological features include its traditional dropping of r except before vowels, a short-a split system (in which, for example, the a in gas is not assonant to the a in gap), a high gliding vowel (in words like talk, thought, all, etc. and thus an absence of the cot–caught merger), absence of the Mary–marry–merry merger, and the highly stigmatized (and largely now-extinct) coil–curl merger. Vocabulary and grammar There are some words or grammatical constructions used mainly in Greater New York City: : a small neighborhood convenience store; used in recent decades, particularly in New York City though not on Long Island generally, it comes from Spanish, originally meaning "a wine storehouse" via the Puerto Rican Spanish term for "small store; corner store"; by extension, "bodega cats" is the term for the cats that inhabit such establishments. These small stores may also be called , which is the short form of delicatessens. bubkes : a worthless amount; little or nothing (from Yiddish; probably an abbreviation of kozebubkes, literally, "goat droppings") dungarees: an older term for blue jeans egg cream: a mixture of cold milk, chocolate syrup, and seltzer (carbonated water) have a catch: to play a game of catch hero: a footlong sandwich or "sub" Mischief Night: the night before Halloween on