13 The GOOSE Lexical Set
The goose lexical set is part of the group of Free vowels that, in most varieties of English, is capable of being in either stressed or unstressed syllables. Because it is a Free vowel, it can exist in a word without a consonant after it, as in shoe, do, clue, skidoo. For the majority of accents, goose is the phoneme that is made with a version of /u/, the close back rounded vowel.
- 🕊Free: can exist without a following consonant
- Can be used in both stressed and unstressed syllables
goose is subdivided into two groups:
- Group Ⓐ, which is the vowel on its own, /u/
- Group Ⓑ, which inserts a “yod” /j/ before the goose vowel, /ju/.
In some accents, Group Ⓑ vowels after an alveolar consonant—that is articulated on the gum ridge /t, d, n, l, s, st, ɹ/—are spoken without the yod, a process known as yod-dropping.
Spellings
Ⓐ o, oo, oCe, ou
Many of the words within Group Ⓐ are spelled “o” (tomb) or “oo” (doom), or “o” before a consonant (C) with a silent “e” (move), or with “ou” (youth). .
Ⓑ uCe, euC, ew, uiC, iew#, eaut
Words in Group Ⓑ, like due, tutor, news, tuition, review, beautify, can take the so-called “liquid U,” that is /u/ preceded by yod, [ju]. These spellings include “u” before a consonant with a silent “e” (mute), “eu” before a consonant (deuce), “ew” (new), “ui” before a consonant (bruise), “iew” in the word view and words containing view-, and “eaut” in the word beauty and all its derivatives. Note that many accents have undergone so-called “yod dropping”, the omission of the [j] in these Group Ⓑ words.
Group Ⓐ words never take a “liquid U,” so for those who lack liquid U before alveolar consonants, such as in words like tutor, news, tuition, lute, it is essential that you only insert yod in Group Ⓑ words, and not try to insert a yod where it doesn’t belong in Group Ⓐ. For example, you wouldn’t insert a [j] into tool *[tjul]—that’s the pronunciation for tulle, a kind of fabric.
Pronunciations
Some phonologists describe the goose set as a glide, sliding up and back, and use the phonemic symbol /uw/ to notate the phoneme’s potential to move in that manner. Other phonologists side with the varieties where goose is a monophthong, /u/. When looking at all the varieties of English, both are possible for goose. Some varieties have more of a diphthongal quality to their usage of the goose set, for example [ə̯ü] in the Cockney accent, while others have more of a pure [u]. The free vowel used in stressed syllables also has a reduced version used in unstressed syllables. Phonologists, especially in the UK, traditionally use the symbol /uː/ with the “long” diacritic mark [ː] for the stressed version of goose, and /u/ for the “short,” unstressed vowel.
In the vast majority of mainstream accents of English, the goose lexical set is pronounced with some variation of the [u] vowel by L1 speakers. In many varieties, that vowel is quite advanced, ranging from the slightly centralized [ü] that you might hear in many parts of Nort