 A pilot study of the merger was done, which yielded perception and production data from a few New Zealand speakers.The results of the pilot survey suggested that although the merger was not found in the speech of all participants, those who produced a distinction between and also accurately perceived a difference between them; those who merged and were less able to accurately perceive the distinction.The finding has been interesting to some linguists because it concurs with the recent understanding that "losing a distinction between two sounds involves losing the ability to produce it as well as to perceive it" (Gordon 2002).