Wells Standard Lexical Sets for English

The Standard Lexical Sets for English introduced by John C. Wells

John C. Wells

John Christopher Wells is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics....

 in 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.

• RP refers to Received Pronunciation
  Received Pronunciation
  Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
  
  , the traditionally prestigious accent in England
  England
  England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
  
  .
• GenAm refers to a conservative accent of the General American
  General American
  General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
  
   type which has resisted the horse-hoarse and cot–caught mergers.

Wells classifies words of the English language into 24 lexical sets on the basis of the pronunciation of the vowel of their stressed syllable in the two reference accents. Each lexical set is named after a representative keyword, as follows:

Key word	RP	GenAm	Example words
KIT	ɪ	ɪ	ship, rip, dim, spirit
DRESS	e	ɛ	step, ebb, hem, terror
TRAP	æ	æ	bad, cab, ham, arrow
LOT	ɒ	ɑ	stop, rob, swan
STRUT	ʌ	ʌ	cub, rub, hum
FOOT	ʊ	ʊ	full, look, could
BATH	ɑː	æ	staff, clasp, dance
CLOTH	ɒ	ɔ	cough, long, laurel, origin
NURSE	ɜː	ɜr	hurt, term, work
FLEECE	iː	i	seed, key, seize
FACE	eɪ	eɪ	weight, rein, steak
PALM	ɑː	ɑ *	calm, bra, father
THOUGHT	ɔː	ɔ *	taut, hawk, broad
GOAT	əʊ	o	soap, soul, home
GOOSE	uː	u	who, group, few
PRICE	aɪ	aɪ	ripe, tribe, aisle, choir
CHOICE	ɔɪ	ɔɪ	boy, void, coin
MOUTH	aʊ	aʊ	pouch, noun, crowd, flower
NEAR	ɪə	ɪr	beer, pier, fierce, serious
SQUARE	ɛə	ɛr	care, air, wear, Mary
START	ɑː	ɑr	far, sharp, farm, safari
NORTH	ɔː	ɔr	war, storm, for, aural
FORCE	ɔː	or	floor, coarse, ore, oral
CURE	ʊə	ʊr	poor, tour, fury

* not followed by /r/

For example, the word rod is pronounced /rɒd/ in RP and /rɑd/ in GenAm. It therefore belongs in the LOT lexical set. Weary is pronounced /ˈwɪərɪ/ in RP and /ˈwɪri/ in GenAm, and thus belongs in the NEAR lexical set.

Some words of the English language do not belong to any lexical set. For example, the stressed syllable of tomato is pronounced /ɑː/ in RP, and /eɪ/ in GenAm, a combination which is very unusual, and is not covered by any of the 24 lexical sets above.

Choice of Keywords

Wells explains his choice of keywords ("kit", "fleece", etc.) as follows:

[t]he keywords have been chosen in such a way that clarity is maximized: whatever accent of English they are spoken in, they can hardly be mistaken for other words. Although fleece is not the commonest of words, it cannot be mistaken for a word with some other vowel; whereas beat, say, if we had chosen it instead, would have been subject to the drawback that one man's pronunciation of beat may sound like another's pronunciation of bait or bit.

Wherever possible the keywords end in a voiceless alveolar

Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...

 or dental consonant.

Unstressed vowels

Wells also describes three sets of words based on their word-final unstressed vowels. Although not included in the standard 24 lexical sets, these "have indexical and diagnostic value in distinguishing accents".

Keyword	Examples
happY	(silly, Tony, merry)
lettER	(beggar, martyr, visor)
commA	(China, sofa)

Uses

The Standard Lexical Sets of Wells are widely used to discuss the phonological

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 and phonetic

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 systems of different accents of English in a clear and concise manner. Although based solely on RP and GenAm, the Standard Lexical Sets have proven useful in describing many other accents of English. This is true because, in many dialects, the words in all or most of the sets are pronounced with similar or identical stressed vowels. Wells himself uses the Lexical Sets most prominently to give "tables of lexical incidence" for all the various accents he discusses in his work. For example, here is the table of lexical incidence he gives for Newfoundland English

Newfoundland English

Newfoundland English is a name for several accents and dialects thereof the English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of these differ substantially from the English commonly spoken elsewhere in Canada...

:

KIT	ɪ		FLEECE	iː		NEAR	ɛr
DRESS	ɛ		FACE	ɛː, ɛɪ		SQUARE	ɛr
TRAP	æ		PALM	æ, ɑː		START	ær
LOT	ɒ		THOUGHT	ɑː		NORTH	ɔ̈r
STRUT	ɔ̈		GOAT	ʌʊ		FORCE	ɔ̈r
FOOT	ʊ		GOOSE	uː		CURE	ɔ̈r
BATH	æ		PRICE	əɪ		happY	[i]
CLOTH	ɑː		CHOICE	əɪ		lettER	ər [ɚ]
NURSE	ɜr		MOUTH	əu		commA	ə

The table indicates that, for example, Newfoundland English uses the /ɪ/ phoneme for words in the KIT lexical set, and that the NORTH, FORCE and CURE sets are all pronounced with the same vowel /ɔ̈r/. Note that some lexical sets, such as FACE, are given with more than one pronunciation: this indicates that not all words in the FACE lexical set are pronounced similarly (in this case because Newfoundland English has not fully undergone the pane–pain merger).

Wells also uses the Standard Lexical Sets to refer to "the vowel sound used for the standard lexical set in question in the accent under discussion": Thus, for example, in describing the Newfoundland accent, Wells writes that "KIT and DRESS are reportedly often merged as [ɪ]", meaning that the stressed syllables of words in the KIT lexical set and words in the DRESS lexical set are reportedly often pronounced identically with the vowel [ɪ].

Lexical sets may also be used to describe splits and mergers. For example, RP, along with most non-rhotic accents, pronounces words such as "father" and "farther" identically. This can be described more economically as the merger of the PALM and START lexical sets. Most North American accents make "father" rhyme with "bother". This can be described as the merger of the PALM and LOT lexical sets.

Origin

In a 2010 blog post, Wells wrote:

I sometimes think that a century from now my lexical sets will be the one thing I shall be remembered for. Yet I dreamt them up over a weekend, frustrated with the incoherent mess of symbols used in such contemporary publications as Weinreich

Uriel Weinreich

Uriel Weinreich was a linguist at Columbia University. Born in Vilnius , he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia, and went on to teach there, specializing in Yiddish studies, sociolinguistics, and dialectology...

's "Is a structural dialectology possible?".

He also wrote that he claimed no copyright in the Standard Lexical Sets, and that everyone was "free to make whatever use of them they wish".

Extensions for English

Some varieties of English make distinctions in stressed vowels that are not captured by the 24 lexical sets. For example, some Irish and Scottish accents that have not undergone the fern–fir–fur merger split the NURSE lexical set into multiple subsets. For such accents, the 24 Wells lexical sets may be inadequate. Because of this, a work devoted to Irish English may split the Wells NURSE set into two subsets, a new, smaller NURSE set and a TERM set.

Use in other languages

Lexical sets have also been used to describe the pronunciation of other languages, such as French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

External links

• Standard Lexical Sets
• Linguistics 001, Lecture 9: Pronunciation of English