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Lexical set
A lexical set is a group of words that share a particular vowel or consonant sound.
A phoneme is a basic unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. Most commonly, following the work of phonetician John C. Wells, a lexical set is a class of words in a language that share a certain vowel phoneme. As Wells himself says, lexical sets "enable one to refer concisely to large groups of words which tend to share the same vowel, and to the vowel which they share". For instance, the pronunciation of the vowel in cup, luck, sun, blood, glove, and tough may vary in different English dialects but is usually consistent within each dialect and so the category of words forms a lexical set, which Wells, for ease, calls the STRUT set. Meanwhile, words like bid, cliff, limb, miss, etc. form a separate lexical set: Wells's KIT set. Originally, Wells developed 24 such labels—keywords—for the vowel lexical sets of English, which have been sometimes modified and expanded by himself or other scholars for various reasons. Lexical sets have also been used to describe the vowels of other languages, such as French, Irish and Scots.
There are several reasons why lexical sets are useful. Scholars of phonetics often use abstract symbols (most universally today, those of the International Phonetic Alphabet) to transcribe phonemes, but they may follow different transcribing conventions or rely on implicit assumptions in their exact choice of symbols. One convenience of lexical sets is their tendency to avoid these conventions or assumptions. Instead, Wells explains, they "make use of keywords intended to be unmistakable no matter what accent one says them in". That makes them useful for examining phonemes within an accent, comparing and contrasting different accents, and capturing how phonemes may be differently distributed based on accent. A further benefit is that people with no background in phonetics can identify a phoneme not by learned symbols or technical jargon but by its simple keyword (like STRUT or KIT in the above examples).
The standard lexical sets for English introduced by John C. Wells in his 1982 Accents of English are in wide usage. Wells defined each lexical set on the basis of the pronunciation of words in two reference accents, which he calls RP and GenAm.
Wells classifies English words into 24 lexical sets on the basis of the pronunciation of the vowel of their stressed syllable in the two reference accents. Typed in small caps, each lexical set is named after a representative keyword. Wells also describes three sets of words based on word-final unstressed vowels, which, though not included in the standard 24 lexical sets (the final three sets listed in the chart below) "have indexical and diagnostic value in distinguishing accents".
For example, the word rod is pronounced /ˈrɒd/ in RP and /ˈrɑd/ in GenAm. It therefore belongs in the LOT lexical set. Weary is pronounced /ˈwɪərɪ/ in RP and /ˈwɪrɪ/ in GenAm and thus belongs in the NEAR lexical set.
Some English words do not belong to any lexical set. For example, the a in the stressed syllable of tomato is pronounced /ɑː/ in RP, and /eɪ/ in GenAm, a combination that is very unusual and is not covered by any of the 27 lexical sets above. Some words pronounced with /ɒ/ before a velar consonant in RP, such as mock and fog, belong to no particular lexical set because the GenAm pronunciation varies between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/.
The GenAm FLEECE, FACE, GOOSE, and GOAT range between monophthongal [i, e, u, o] and diphthongal [ɪi, eɪ, ʊu, oʊ], and Wells chose to phonemicize three of them as monophthongs for the sake of simplicity and FACE as /eɪ/ to avoid confusion with RP DRESS, /e/.
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Lexical set
A lexical set is a group of words that share a particular vowel or consonant sound.
A phoneme is a basic unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. Most commonly, following the work of phonetician John C. Wells, a lexical set is a class of words in a language that share a certain vowel phoneme. As Wells himself says, lexical sets "enable one to refer concisely to large groups of words which tend to share the same vowel, and to the vowel which they share". For instance, the pronunciation of the vowel in cup, luck, sun, blood, glove, and tough may vary in different English dialects but is usually consistent within each dialect and so the category of words forms a lexical set, which Wells, for ease, calls the STRUT set. Meanwhile, words like bid, cliff, limb, miss, etc. form a separate lexical set: Wells's KIT set. Originally, Wells developed 24 such labels—keywords—for the vowel lexical sets of English, which have been sometimes modified and expanded by himself or other scholars for various reasons. Lexical sets have also been used to describe the vowels of other languages, such as French, Irish and Scots.
There are several reasons why lexical sets are useful. Scholars of phonetics often use abstract symbols (most universally today, those of the International Phonetic Alphabet) to transcribe phonemes, but they may follow different transcribing conventions or rely on implicit assumptions in their exact choice of symbols. One convenience of lexical sets is their tendency to avoid these conventions or assumptions. Instead, Wells explains, they "make use of keywords intended to be unmistakable no matter what accent one says them in". That makes them useful for examining phonemes within an accent, comparing and contrasting different accents, and capturing how phonemes may be differently distributed based on accent. A further benefit is that people with no background in phonetics can identify a phoneme not by learned symbols or technical jargon but by its simple keyword (like STRUT or KIT in the above examples).
The standard lexical sets for English introduced by John C. Wells in his 1982 Accents of English are in wide usage. Wells defined each lexical set on the basis of the pronunciation of words in two reference accents, which he calls RP and GenAm.
Wells classifies English words into 24 lexical sets on the basis of the pronunciation of the vowel of their stressed syllable in the two reference accents. Typed in small caps, each lexical set is named after a representative keyword. Wells also describes three sets of words based on word-final unstressed vowels, which, though not included in the standard 24 lexical sets (the final three sets listed in the chart below) "have indexical and diagnostic value in distinguishing accents".
For example, the word rod is pronounced /ˈrɒd/ in RP and /ˈrɑd/ in GenAm. It therefore belongs in the LOT lexical set. Weary is pronounced /ˈwɪərɪ/ in RP and /ˈwɪrɪ/ in GenAm and thus belongs in the NEAR lexical set.
Some English words do not belong to any lexical set. For example, the a in the stressed syllable of tomato is pronounced /ɑː/ in RP, and /eɪ/ in GenAm, a combination that is very unusual and is not covered by any of the 27 lexical sets above. Some words pronounced with /ɒ/ before a velar consonant in RP, such as mock and fog, belong to no particular lexical set because the GenAm pronunciation varies between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/.
The GenAm FLEECE, FACE, GOOSE, and GOAT range between monophthongal [i, e, u, o] and diphthongal [ɪi, eɪ, ʊu, oʊ], and Wells chose to phonemicize three of them as monophthongs for the sake of simplicity and FACE as /eɪ/ to avoid confusion with RP DRESS, /e/.