20 The SQUARE Lexical Set
The square lexical set is part of the group known as the Centring Diphthongs, which go from the edge of the vowel space towards its center, towards schwa, with or without r-coloring. In this case, the nucleus of the diphthong is comparable to dress, with values in the range of [e ~ ɛ]. Depending on accent, the offglide can go from a relatively close position [eɘ̯˞/eɘ̯] to [ɛɚ̯/ɛə̯], to even [ea̯].
In non-rhotic accents, it is possible for smoothing to occur to centring diphthongs, so that they become merely the value of their nucleus. This means that, in some non-rhotic accents, a word like there might be fully articulated in its dictionary form as [ðɛə̯], but in rapid speech, it might be reduced to merely [ðɛ]. Of the 5 centring diphthongs (near, square, cure, north/force, and start), both cure and near are fairly resistant to this smoothing process, while the more open centring diphthongs are either smoothed in all contexts already (e.g. north/force [ɔ] and start [ɑ]), or are in the process of becoming so (square [ɛ]).
In many accents of North American English, words with ‹-arr›, as in Harry, guarantee, carried, marriage, which are trap +/r/ in other accents, are either square, or dress + /r/, such that words like marry and merry are homophones.
In some accents where square and dress + /r/ are not merged, e.g. Mary ≠ merry, it can be difficult to discern whether a word belongs to one group or the other in the environment before an intervocalic /r/ (an /r/ between two vowels). Wells calls the words in this situation square Ⓒ. Here’s how to recognize the two contexts (we’ll use Received Pronunciation as an example accent here, but this complication can happen in many other accents as well.) When [ɛ~e] precedes an intervocalic /r/ there are two options.
- The first is dress on its own, as a speaker might have in a word like merry, which is [ˈmɛɹi̽] in RP.
- The second is (of course) square, as you might have in a word like (ahem) Mary, [ˈmɛə̯ɹi̽], which is square Ⓒ. The schwa [ə] provides a kind of “speed-bump” after the [ɛ] that you can hear as a tiny “uh” between the nucleus and the consonant /r/.
In all cases where the dress vowel is preferred in accents of this type over square Ⓒ, the word is spelled with ‹er› or ‹err› as in very, America, ceremony, error, verify, necessary, terrace, therapy, Jeremy, terrible. Many (but not all) cases where square Ⓒ is appropriate have an ‹a› as part of the spelling, as in ‹ar-, air-, ear-› as in vary, Mary, various, preparing, fairy, dairy, repairing, wearing, bearing, tearing.
- 🕊 Free: does not require a following consonant, and can exist on its own
- A Centring Diphthong, that moves from the periphery towards the center (schwa).
- in stressed and unstressed syllables
Spellings
Wells, in devising the square Lexical Set, created three subgroups that correspond to historical pronunciations. When accents split square, they tend to do so along these historical lines.
(a; c) are#, air#,