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Are the happY and horsEs sets merged in all non-happy-tensing accents? There are some accents where happY is lowered to [e] or [E] (Scottish, Southern US); is horsEs also lowered?
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>>Are the happY and horsEs sets merged in all non-happy-tensing accents?<<
From what I know, no. The matter is that in, say, dialects that neither tense nor lower the final vowel in "happy" the distinction is not really between [I] and [i:] but rather between [i] and [i:], and such is preserved when one adds further morphemes onto the word in question. Consequently, not just the quality of second vowel in "happy" differ from the quality of the second vowel in "horses" but the quality of the second vowel in "happiness" should differ from the latter as well. Of course, one need not introduce a new phoneme /i/ in opposition to both /I/ and /i:/ to handle this case, as one can simply handle it as a morpheme-final realization of /I/.
>>There are some accents where happY is lowered to [e] or [E] (Scottish, Southern US); is horsEs also lowered?<<
From what I know, no. I am not all too familiar with Scottish English dialects, but I definitely know that with happy-lowering in southern NAE dialects the second vowel in "horses" is not lowered as well.
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This thread got buried by vandalism, but I still want to continue this discussion. There are certainly accents for which they are merged: Wells indicates that they are for him, and I'm listening right now to a song by an artist from Manchester in which 'ladies' [le:dIz] rhymes with 'wages' [we:dZIz].
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