Origin In a 2010 blog post, Wells wrote: He also wrote that he claimed no copyright in the standard lexical sets, and that everyone was "free to make whatever use of them they wish". Extensions Some varieties of English make distinctions in stressed vowels that are not captured by the 24 lexical sets. For example, some Irish and Scottish accents that have not undergone the fern–fir–fur merger split the lexical set into multiple subsets. For such accents, the 24 Wells lexical sets may be inadequate. Because of this, a work devoted to Irish English may split the Wells set into two subsets, a new, smaller set and a set. Some writers on English accents have introduced a set to refer to a set of words that have the vowel in standard accents but may have a different vowel in Sheffield or in south-east London. Wells has stated that he didn't include a set because this should be interpreted as an allophone of that is sensitive to the morpheme boundary, which he illustrates by comparing the London pronunciations of goalie and slowly. , which documents the phonologies of varieties of English around the world like , employs Wells's standard lexical sets as well as the following supplementary lexical sets, as needed to illustrate finer details of the variety under discussion: , discussed above hors, offics, paintd and villge, all referring to the unstressed allophone of that is subject to the weak vowel merger , and , for the allophones of ( in non-rhotic dialects), and before intervocalic , commonly subject to Mary-marry-merry merger in North American English and , for the allophones of and before intervocalic , commonly subject to mirror-nearer merger in North American English treac and unc, both referring to the vocalized Other supplementary lexical sets include: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , met, , , , , , , , carr, cord, crious, , , bout, , , , , , , , , , , , , There is also the set, which is the same as Wellsian . See also Diaphoneme Homophone Minimal pair References Bibliography External links Nicole Taylor (with the collaboration of Norma Mendoza-Denton ), The University