6 The FOOT Lexical Set
The foot lexical set is part of the group of sets that can only be in Checked syllables. Also, foot is found in both stressed or unstressed syllables. Historically, foot evolved from the short /u/ vowel, while goose evolved from the long /u/. In most varieties of English today, foot is more mid-central than goose, on a line in the vowel space between where goose lies, and schwa, /ə/. It can have some degree of rounding, though there are many accents that have very little, or none at all.
- ☑️ Checked: requires a following consonant, and cannot exist on its own
- in both stressed and unstressed syllables
Spellings
uC, ooC, oC, ouC
There are only a small number of words with this vowel in a stressed syllable. However, many of them are high frequency words, so it’s a relatively common vowel in spoken English.
The foot vowel can also be heard in unstressed syllables, frequently in compound words with endings such as -book, -wood, -look, -hood, -brook(e), -put, or prefixes with ful- or full-. In many varieties of English, these unstressed versions of the foot vowel are further reduced to schwa [ə], especially in less emphatic, conversational usage.
Facebook, Hollywood, outlook, neighborhood, Holbrook, output, fulfil, full-time
Parallel to the so-called “liquid U” version of the goose vowel (aka goose Ⓑ), [ju], there is a similar “liquid foot” vowel which is in some accents is pronounced as [jʊ], though many accents today, including the contemporary version of RP, have the even more reduced syllable with schwa, [jə]. We’ll call it foot Ⓑ, though Wells certainly didn’t use that term; his usage only applied to stressed syllables. Note that it is always spelled with ‹u›.
popular, January, February, particular, population, regular, executive, spectacular, manufacturer, reputation, occupation, regulation, calculated, formula, documentary, fabulous, deputy, valuable, ridiculous, document, speculation, simulator, peninsula, contributor, accuracy, formulary, monuments, arguments, ambulance, curriculum, molecular, reputable, calculator
Pronunciations
The foot lexical set is pronounced with some variation of the [ʊ] vowel in the vast majority of mainstream accents of English. The quality of the foot vowel can vary quite a lot, in its degree of rounding, and its degree of closeness and/or backness. As foot evolved from the short goose vowel, the two are linked in many accents. In many accents, when goose is in the backest, most close position of an accent’s vowel space around [u], foot falls between schwa [ə] and goose, somewhere on the diagonal between the two. With more of a goose influence, the vowel will be more in the range of [ʊ̹̠]; with more of a schwa influence, it will be more in the range of [ə̹ ~ ʊ̜̽]. In other cases, when goose is more central with a pronunciation such as [ʉ ~ ə̯ʉ], foot can be more mid-centralized, in the range of [ɵ], though it doesn’t have to be (e.g. in parts of Australia, where goose is quite fronted, foot