He, she ,we

>> I think it IS restricted to those cases. I pronounce "beer" the same way I pronounce "here", "near"... the vowel as in "beet", not as in "bit". <<

Well, there is of course the tense-lax neutralization thing going on, but I would have to say, to my ears, when I pronounce it, it sounds just like the "i" in "bit", and not at all like the "ee" in "beet".  When I deliberately try to pronounce them with a very tense /i/, they sound rather odd.  Here, near, ear are the same as well.  Merry, Mary, and marry, all have an /E/ sound (occastionally shifted to [ æ ] ).  What do you have for them?

>> If I say "beer" with the vowel in "bit", it sounds very similar to "bear". <<

Really???  

>> And since my /ɪ/ (IPA) - /I/ (XSAMPA) is very close to /e/ <<

Hmm.  The "in" in "pit" and the /e/ in "made" sound very different.  How can you pronounce them very "close"?

>> The vowel is obviously different from the one in "bit" http://cougar.eb.com/soundc11/b/bit00001.wav , don't you think? <<

Then I guess it is the tense-lax neutralization thing that occurs in my dialect.  I honestly can't hear the difference.  To me, they sound exactly identical (the vowel in beer and bit), and if I were to write it fauxnetically, I would probably write bir.  I think it is because we are native speakers of different languages, we actually have different distinctions that we can naturally hear.  In other words, you can hear a clear difference, I can't.  It's similar to people that have the pin-pen merger.  People with the merger cannot perceive *any* difference between the vowel sounds in "pin" and "pen", even though people that pronounce them differently insist that there is a clear difference.  Before /n/, /I/ and /E/ sound identical.  Without special training, people with the merger cannot even transcribe them differently.  I think it's the same with this.  When I say (or hear) "beer", whether you pronounce it [ bIr\ ] or [ bir\ ] , it sounds like [ bIr\ ] to me.

>> Well, those two vowels are very close to each other in the IPA chart of vowels, aren't they? And adding an /r/ sound complicates matters... <<

Interesting.  To me, /I/ and /e/ are so different that there is no possibility of confusion.  I think this is similar to what I said about bir and beer.  In my dialect, /I/ and /e/ quite distinct, are as likely to be confused as /I/ and /u/.

I see you pronounce "you're", "we're" and you'll diferently than I do.  I normally pronounce them as [ jr\= ] and [ wr\ ] ( We're going to the store [ wr\= gowin t_hu D@ stOr\ ] ) and [ jol ] .  Also, the word "poor".  I remember being surprised when I read that some people don't have the pour-poor merger.  I have [ p_hOr\ ] for both of those.  I thought that it was "pour" that had the variation.  I was surprised that it was "poor", that could be pronounced like you pronounce it.  I also assumed that is was restricted to East coast dialects, and I was surprised to find that many Westerners and Midwesterners pronounce "poor" like that, as I've never heard that pronunciation before.

>> I think the half-tense cases can come out either tense or lax or in between in normal speech, and I think which comes out depends on context and speed. <<

Yeah, I think you're right.