15 The PRICE Lexical Set

A Closing Diphthong goes from wherever the nucleus starts to a close coda. The most common type of price is a wide closing diphthong, where the nucleus of the diphthong is open [a ~ ɑ], which then off-glides towards [ɪ̯], so we have [aɪ̯ ~ a̠ɪ̯ ~ ɑ̟ɪ̯ ~ ɑɪ̯]. There are many other variants for price, with as many as five alternate options, depending on how you count them. These include the well-known monophthong version [a] heard in accents of the US South; mid-centralized versions like [əɪ̯] heard in parts of the South of England, which contrasts with the back and sometimes rounded versions (like [ɒɪ̯]) which one might hear there in more urban speech; and finally a diphthong with a mid-front offglide, [ae̯ ~ aɛ̯], as one might hear in Manchester or Leeds. And then there are accents with allophonic variations, that have one version of price before a voiceless consonant, a different version before a voiced consonant (sometimes called pride or prize), and, rarely, a third version at the end of a morpheme or word (sometimes called pried or pry).

price can be in both Free and Checked syllables, both stressed and unstressed. Many price vowels in unstressed syllables are the result of compound words, such as website, guideline, hightlight, or suffixes like -side as in outside, seaside or poolside.

• 🕊Free: does not require a following consonant, and can exist on its own, e.g. I, eye
•  Frequently a front closing diphthong, though it can be a monophthong
• in stressed and unstressed syllables

Spellings

Wells, in devising the price Lexical Set, created two subgroups that correspond to spellings; those spellings relate to historical pronunciations, though there are very few accents that differentiate these two versions today (and they’re almost exclusively in Scotland). Basically, Group Ⓑ are words that had price followed by the consonant /x/ back in the days of Middle English, and all of the words that take that have ‹ig› in their spelling.

price Ⓐ: ‹iCe, ie, i, y›, as in nice, pie, find, by

price Ⓑ: ‹igh, ign›, as in right, high, sign

As someone from a country where many people have an allophone for price before a voiceless consonant, and a different vowel quality at the end of a word or when followed by voiced consonant, I certainly understand the argument for differentiating the 3 sub-groups, which some define by using the keywords price, prize, and pry. However, re-using the price keyword to represent only one third of the price lexical set seems very confusing. Using alternate keywords, like tight / tide / tied, is probably a better choice.

Pronunciations

Across all accents, the nucleus of the price lexical set is pronounced with a broad range of vowels, either rounded [ɔ ~ ɒ], or unrounded and more open [a ~ ɑ ], or unrounded and more medial [ʌ ~ ə ~ ɐ]. price generally features an offglide towards /j/, typically [ɪ̯], and sometimes with more closure—what I call more “bite,” as if you’re biting down on the diphthong—towards [i̯]. There are also variants with “less bite,” that offglide to [e ~ ɛ]. And, as we’ve already discussed, variants that have no “bite” (offglide) at all, whose nucleus is usually in the realm of [a ~ a̠ ~ ɑ̟ ~ ɑ].

The nucleus of price is usually more advanced than the nucleus of mouth, but not always. In cases where price’s nucleus is back and mouth’s is front, as we find in London, New Jersey and Philadelphia accents, we have the price–mouth Crossover, as Wells dubbed it.

There are many accents—primarily in the US South—where price is a monophthong in all settings, and its quality is typically in the area of [a ~ ɑ̟]. There are also many more US accents, both in the South and in the Midlands, that also have monophthong price, but not in all settings; typically they have the monophthong in free syllables, or when followed by a voiced consonant. In the Midlands, they only have price monophthonging before /m, n, l, r/. When these accents don’t have the price monophthong, they have the fairly familiar [aɪ̯] diphthong.

Canadian Raising is a subvariant of price before voiceless consonants, where the nucleus is “raised” towards a mid-central vowel, and the offglide is also a little more close: tight is [əi̯], as in might, site, knife; in all other settings, tie/tide is [aɪ̯] as in my, side, knives. So-Called Canadian Raising doesn’t happen exclusively in Canada: Virginia, coastal South Carolina, Philadelphia, Eastern New England and The US North also have this feature.

Since 1600, almost all accents have had a merger of price Ⓐ and Ⓑ. In fact, the traditional dialects of Scotland and Northern England that differentiate these two do so only in terms of length—the vowel quality for both sub-sets is /i/:

price Ⓐ die        [diː]

price Ⓑ right      [ɹit]

In more contemporary Scottish and Northern Irish accents, the allophonic variants are very complicated to explain. The first variant is in tie, which is in syllables that are “free”, that lack a final consonant, which are [ae̯]. So tie, sigh, and tied, sighed, are tie, but not tide, side, or tiɡht, sight=site, which are tide/tight: [ʌi̯]. To further complicate matters, tie [ae̯] here includes syllables ending in voiced fricatives or /r/, such as tithe, rise, hive, fire.

Personal Pronunciation: Articulation Options

First let’s identify whether you have a monophthong, a diphthong, or possibly both. Say the following words slowly, and try to feel/hear whether your price vowel moves in a closing direction (up and forward): high, die, find, style, night, like.

Note that the diphthong is a movement of the tongue, a closing by raising the middle of your tongue up toward the roof of your mouth. If you do have a monophthong, it is less likely to happen in a word with a voiceless consonant following the vowel, as in like or night , than in a syllable where the price vowel is at the end of a syllable/word, as in die or high, or when followed by a voiced consonant, as in find or style.

These is one other check we should do here: do you have Canadian Raising, whether you’re Canadian or not, where price before a voiceless consonant is raised to [əi̯]? This is quite common in many parts of North America. Let’s check—compare these minimal pairs:

+ voiceless C/ + voiced C: tripe/tribe, right/ride, light/lied, advice/advise, rice/rise, rifle/rival

The former will likely be significantly shorter than the latter. Here is an occasion where a recording might make it easier to discern the vowel quality of the two settings, and/or whether you have a diphthong or a monophthong on such a short vowel sound; a spectrogram might make it even easier, though you would want to be sure to speak both words on the same pitch, so that that doesn’t distract you from hearing whether there is a change in vowel quality.

Perhaps a simpler and more accessible option would be to video your mouth (or look in a mirror!) as you say these pairs: can you see your mouth closing, your tongue raising more on the first item in these pairs?

Monophthong or Closing Diphthong: Now that we’ve figured out whether you have a diphthong or a monophthong, let’s try to figure out what the specific vowel quality of your price monophthong, or the nucleus of your diphthong could be. Begin by exploring the pronoun we use for ourselves: I. If it’s a diphthong, lengthen the nucleus, the beginning of the diphthong; if it’s a monophthong, just hang out there for a moment. If your pitch drops as you say it, it can help to intone the sound on one “note” or pitch so you don’t get distracted by the change of melody. You could use a word like buy, or repeat the words above. Use an audio or video recorder to experiment on your own, or work with a coach, teacher, classmate or friend to identify how your price compares with someone else’s price. Next, subtly shift the beginning of price around in your vowel space (your mouth!) in tiny steps —up, forwards, down, and back—before rising up to your offglide if you have one. You should feel the top surface of the middle of your tongue moving delicately up and down as you experiment while keeping your tongue tip behind your lower front teeth. (There are more nerves at the front of the tongue, so it may be a little easier to figure out what’s going on here than on a back phoneme like goat or thought.) Notice how your tongue moves towards/away from your hard palate/velum and alveolar ridge, making more or less space near the front of your mouth.

Back (and Rounded?) variation: Explore the vertical dimension with your lips rounding forward, from an unrounded [ɑ], or a rounded [ɑ̹], sliding through either unrounded [ɑ̞, ɑ, ɑ̝,   ʌ̞, ʌ, ʌ̝], or rounded [ɑ̹,   ɒ̞, ɒ, ɒ̝,   ɔ̞, ɔ, ɔ̝], etc., slowly moving higher and more close: can you find a starting place that matches your speech? Once you’ve locked onto it, rock up and down, above and below, more close, more open. Is this your starting spot? Compare price with rounded thought and lot (how do tight/tied sound when followed by taut and tot?), and see how great the contrast is between the nuclei of these vowel sounds.

Unrounded Central variation: with your lips relaxed, explore the vertical dimension from [ə], sliding up towards [ə̝, ɘ̞, ɘ, ɘ̝, ɨ̞, ɨ, ɨ̝], slowly moving higher and more close. Then explore going lower, sliding down towards [ə̞, ɜ̝, ɜ, ɜ̞, ɐ̝, ɐ, ɐ̞], slowly moving lower and more open.Try to find where your price sound begins. Once you’re sure of where it is, shift the value of it up and down very slightly, above and below, more open, more close. Be confident in where yours is and isn’t. Compare price with unrounded strut and nurse (compare bite with butt and Bert), and with rounded thought and lot (compare tight/tied with taut and tot ), and see how great the contrast is between the nuclei of these vowel sounds.

Offglide: Let’s turn our attention to the offglide, if you’ve got one. Where does price end? Due to the reduced quality of the offglide, which tends to be quieter, this is much harder to ascertain than the nucleus. When speakers focus on their offglide they often over-emphasize it; when they are being more emphatic, they may resort to a more extreme articulation of the offglide, and in distorting it, could easily miss the true nature of its vowel quality.

It might be worth recording some words, such as fiber, ride, prize, hive, (or pipe, right, price, life if you only have the diphthong before voiceless consonants) at regular speed and then using software (such as the free Audacity app and the “Effect>Change Tempo…” menu item) to slow down the word in order to hear what’s going on. It’s always best to put the word you’re exploring in the middle of a phrase when you do this, as words at the beginning or end of a phrase can be affected by prosodic effects. Something like “The word ____ is interesting” should get you an undistorted pronunciation.

For closing diphthongs, this vowel will be quite close, in the range of [ɪ], [i], or [ɨ]. In some accents, the offglide is forward, usually around [e] or [ɛ].

Transcribing price: Decide which vowel symbol best suits the nucleus of price in your speech:

If your price nucleus is… (use whichever vowel symbol is appropriate for you)

• high, use the raised diacritic [ a̝ ], a small T pointing up
• open, use the lowered diacritic [ a̞ ], a small T pointing down
• pushed forward, use the advanced diacritic [ ɑ̟ ], a tiny plus sign +
• pulled back, use the retracted diacritic [ a̠ ], a tiny minus sign –
• having only minimal lip-rounding, use the unrounded diacritic on a normally rounded symbol [ɒ̜] or the rounded diacritic on a normally unrounded one [ɑ̹]

If you have a closing price diphthong, your coda/offglide will likely be unrounded

• close front, so use a lower-case i, [ i̯ ]
• near-close near-front, so use a small-cap i [ ɪ̯ ]
• close central, so use a lower-case barred i, [ɨ̯]
• mid-close front, so use a lowercase e, [e̯]
• mid-open front, so use an epsilon ɛ, [ɛ̯]

Alternate Pronunciations

Experiment with the price Word Lists, Phrases and Sentences with the following price options:

As you move the vowels in these directions, see whether that modified oral posture might inspire you to move the articulation of consonants and other vowels in the word in similar ways. Does it remind you of an accent other than your own?

Word Lists for price in a Free Syllable, at the end of a word

KEY: ◾︎ price in stressed syllable ◽︎ price in unstressed syllable