Vowels DRESS

The main splits in the KIT set, as seen above, warrant the establishment of at least two other sets which I will call the paintEd and villAge sets. The paintEd set would comprise words in -ess (actress, princess), -less, -ness, -men. The villAge set would comprise words in –ace, -ain, -ate, -ein.

RP has only one mid-front vowel, which many authors situate slightly above cardinal vowel No 3. It is represented in many systems of transcription, including the one used by Wells’ UCL Department of Phonetics, with the symbol /e/ which, in strict phonetic terms, is the symbol for cardinal vowel No 2 which does not represent the exact quality of the DRESS vowel. Since RP has only one mid-front vowel, the use of /e/ poses no major problem. But the situation is different in CamE, which offers an interesting split of the DRESS vowel. The regular realizations of the DRESS vowel are /ε/ and /e/, which are in complementary distribution in some cases: /ε/ occurs in final syllables as in pen, rest, breast, while /e/ occurs before one and only one medial consonant, and before Cj, Cw and Cr sequences as in element, medical, special, educate, equity, equalize, metric, retrograde. The tensing of /ε/ to /e/ in this context is known in the literature (Simo Bobda 1994: 181f) as the E-Tensing Rule. /e/ further occurs frequently before the sequences mC and nC as in embassy, emperor, member, centre, mention. /e/ finally occurs with the common word says, as a result of the local restructuring of the FACE vowel induced by the analogy with say and other words in orthographic ay.

Other realizations of the DRESS vowel are induced by some analogy with an existing pattern. S[i]nate is thus due presumably to the influence of seen, scene; Gr[i]nwich is induced by the pronunciation of green; m[i]dow, p[i]sant, z[i]lous, cleanly (adjective) are induced by the majority of the words in ea pronounced with /i/; and /i/ in de-, pre-, and re- words like d[i]claration, pr[i]paration, r[i]servation is induced by the pronunciation of declare, prepare, reserve, etc. Loose resemblance with words beginning with –in, -inter, etc. can be held responsible for [i]nter, [i]ntrance, while English, England can be seen as the source of confusion for CamE [i]ngine, [i]ngineer.

Finally, the non-application of the RP rule of Trisyllabic Tensing is responsible for /i/ in ser[i]nity, supr[i]macy, obsc[i]nity, and /iε, iə/ , the CamE version of the NEAR vowel as shown below, in aust [iε, iə] rity, sinc [iε, iə] rity, sever [iε, iə] rity, which correspond to the pronunciation of the bases austere, sincere, severe, respectively.