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A lexical set is a group of words that share a particular phonological feature.. 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 pho
John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. ... A lexical set is a set of words (named with a designated element) that share ...
The merger results in the FLEECE lexical set, as defined by John Wells. Words in the set that had ENE /iː/ (Middle English /eː/) are mostly spelled ee (meet, green, etc.), with a single e in monosyllables (be, me) or followed by a single consonant and a vowel letter (these, Peter), sometimes ie or ei (believe, ceiling), or irregularly (key ...
A commonly-used system of lexical sets, devised by John C. Wells, is presented below; for each set, the corresponding phonemes are given for RP and General American, using the notation that will be used on this page.
The name FOOT – STRUT split refers to the lexical sets introduced by Wells (1982) and identifies the vowel phonemes in the words. From a historical point of view, however, the name is inappropriate because the word foot did not have short /ʊ/ when the split happened, but it underwent shortening only later.
Wells refers to the class as the cure words after the keyword of the lexical set to which he assigns them. In traditional Received Pronunciation and General American, cure words are pronounced with Received Pronunciation /ʊə/ (/ʊər/ before a vowel) and General American /ʊr/. [25]
The table below shows the pronunciation of many of these words, classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells: TRAP for /æ/, BATH for RP /ɑː/ vs. General American /æ/, PALM for /ɑː/, THOUGHT for /ɔː/, FACE for /eɪ/.
In the terminology of John C. Wells, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets comma and letter. It is found in all or nearly all non-rhotic accents and is present even in some accents that are in other respects rhotic, such as those of some speakers in Jamaica and the Bahamas. [73]