10 August 2014

Relevance of syllable

The syllable is a very important unit. Speakers can naturally count syllables in a sentence even though they are not linguists and tapping at syllables shows the syllable's importance in the rhythm of speech. Syllables are very important for rhymes since rhyming works by matching the last syllable of a line.

In relation to the way we produce syllables as sounds, syllables are described as consisting of a central vowel which has little or no obstruction to airflow and whose sound is comparatively loud, while at the beginning and the end of the syllable there will be greater obstruction to airflow and less loud sound in consonants.
Minimum syllable is a single vowel in isolation.
are /a:/    or  /o:/
Some syllables have an onset = one or more consonants preceding the centre of the syllable.    
more /mo:/    bar /ba:/
Other syllables have a coda = they end with consonants.
ought /o:t/   ease /i:z/
Some syllables have both onset and coda.
ran  /ræn/    sat  /sæt/

If the first syllable of the word begins with a vowel, this initial syllable has a zero onset. When there are two or more consonants together at the beginning of the syllable, it is called a consonant cluster (stay, sting, smoke, play, try, swim). Clusters occur even in words which are only pronounced with clusters but not written with them like in quick, few, huge, news. The first consonant is the initial consonant and the second the post-initial consonant. In three consonant clusters, "S" acts as the pre-initial consonant that occurs before p, t, k (spray, string, stew, screen).
At the end of a syllable, there can be up to four consonants. If there is no final consonant, it is called zero coda. If there is only one consonant, it is called the final consonant and except for h, w, j any consonant can be final. R is a special case as it does not appear in pronunciation of the RP.
The pre-final consonants are m, n, l, s like in bump, bank, belt, ask. The post-final consonants are s, z, t, d, 0 as in bets /bets/, beds /bedz/, packed, bagged, eighth. A special case are clusters with no pre-final consonants but three post-final consonants as in texts.


pre-initial     initial     post-initial              VOWEL           pre-initial     final     post-final
                  ONSET                                                                                      CODA

Normally, a syllable must have a vowel in the centre but there is a special case of syllabic consonants. In very long syllables likes in the word "students," we naturally divide the word into two syllables as we feel it is right, even though there is only one vowel.

The problem of syllable description happens in connected speech where consonants from the end of one word combine with the beginning of the following word. Also, when dividing a word consisting of more syllables, we are often not sure which consonants belong to which vowel so we have to employ  maximal onsets principle which states that if two syllables are to be divided, any consonants between them should be attached to the right-hand syllable. Thus "morning" would be divided into two as /mo:   niɳ/. However, it is very peculiar to divide some words even with this principle. Sometimes one consonants can even belong to both syllables and is, therefore, ambisyllabic.

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