16 The MOUTH Lexical Set
A Closing Diphthong goes from wherever the nucleus starts to a close coda. The most common type of mouth vowel is a wide closing diphthong, where the nucleus of the diphthong is open [a ~ ɑ], which then off-glides up and back towards [ʊ̯], so we have [aʊ̯ ~ a̠ʊ̯ ~ ɑ̟ʊ̯ ~ ɑʊ̯]. There are many other variants for mouth: Bernd Kortmann’s Varieties of English lists 6 (!) variations 4 different diphthong and 2 monophthong options. There are also accents with allophonic variations—Canadian Raising being perhaps the most famous example of this—that have one version of mouth before a voiceless consonant, and a different version before a voiced consonant or vowel (sometimes called alternate keyword “proud,” named to parallel a similar change happening to the price lexical set, which goes by “pride/pried”).
mouth can be in both Free and Checked syllables, both stressed and unstressed.
- 🕊Free: does not require a following consonant, and can exist on its own, e.g. ow, bough=bow
- in stressed and unstressed syllables
Spellings
The mouth Lexical Set has no subgroups, unlike many other lexical sets; this means that if you can identify a mouth word, you’re probably on track! However, there is at least one allophonic variant, when mouth is followed by a voiceless consonant, so depending on the accent you’re working on you may have to pay attention to which version of the mouth set you’re using.
mouth: ‹ouC, ow, owC, ough›, as in out, how, crowd, bough
mouth historically comes from /u/ in Middle English, and the influence of French is where the ‹ou› spelling came from. This connection of /u/ and ‹ou› is maintained even today in words where that spelling is followed by labials /p, b/, followed by velars /k, ɡ/, or when it is preceded by /j/, as in words like group, troubadour, cougar, you, youth. There are no mouth words in these settings.
Pronunciations
The nucleus of the mouth lexical set can be pronounced with a broad range of vowels, either monophthongs or diphthongs. The majority of accents have a diphthong with an open, central vowel for its nucleus somewhere between [a] and [ɑ ], and an offglide moving back and up, heading in the general direction of /w/ with realizations that include /u̯ ~ ʊ̯ ~ ʉ̯ ~ o̯ ~ ɤ̯/. There are also some instances where the offglide goes towards a more central articulation of [ɨ̯ ~ ʉ̯], such as one hears in some Ulster accents, while London may have a mid-central offglide, [ə̯]. Varieties of the mouth diphthong nucleus include a raised and backed onset [ʌu̯ ~ ɔʊ̯]; a raised and centralized onset [əʊ̯], either in all settings, or just before a voiceless consonant; and a fronted onset, [æʊ̯ ~ æʉ̯ ~ æo̯ ~ ɛo̯] (or with alternate offglides, such as [æə̯] or [ɛɪ̯]). mouth monophthong varieties are either a low vowel [ a̠ ~ ɑ̟ ], or a mid/high back vowel [o].
The nucleus of mouth is usually further back than the nucleus of price, but not always. In cases where mouth’s nucleus is front and price’s is back, as we fi