Reading 2

Wells: sets and systems

Vowel system of RP; Wells 119

Vowel system of GenAm; Wells 120

RP
Wells 120

GenAm
Wells 121-2

p.125

p.127

p.131-2

Importance of lexical sets for

vowels
In Phonetics (Hlj og Or) in the first year
we equated the KEYWORD of the lexical
set with the vowel.
commA (Schwa)
cranberry pie

TRAP DRESS

PRICE

Importance of lexical sets for

vowels
These keywords for lexical sets were first
developed by Wells in his Accents of
English (1982)
They are conceived in a slightly different
way from our use of them in 1st year
Phonetics
They now refer not to fixed vowels, but to
sets of words which may have different
vowels in different accents.

Importance of lexical sets for

vowels
Father started walking along the path
PALM

START

THOUGHT

LOT

BATH

Importance of lexical sets for

vowels
A lexical set is a set of words which regularly has the
same vowel-sound in a single accent. (TRAP in S.
England)
If the same set exists in another accent, it may have
a different vowel. (TRAP in N. England, TRAP in N.
America)
Sets may differ between accents. Parent is a
SQUARE word in Britain, but a TRAP word in N.America

Importance of lexical sets for

vowels
There may be different ways of looking at
(or analysing) the same data:
We could say that, in the N. of England,
the STRUT words all had the same vowel as
the FOOT words
or that there is no set of STRUT words in the
N. of England they all belong to the FOOT
set.