Lecture 5. Syllabic Structure of English Words.

Though the basic phonological elements are phonemes, human communication is actualized in syllables. The syllable is operational in all languages, it is a universal phenomenon.

Syllableis the minimal grouping of vowels and consonants necessary for articulation (phonetic unit) and for storing strings of phonemes in the mental representation (phonological unit). Syllable can be defined as a complex unit made up of nuclear and marginal elements, with vowels acting as nuclear, syllabic elements and consonants as marginalor non-syllabic ones.

There have been attempts to describe syllable as a minimal articulatory unit in terms of ‘chest-pulse’ theory by R.H.Stetson, sonority theory by Otto Jespersen, as an arc of muscular tension by L.V.Scherba or, perceptually, an arc of loudness by N.I.Zhinkin. Syllable is also a minimal prosodic unit in which prosodic features of pitch, length and loudness may be realized.

The syllable may consist of the onset, the nucleus and the coda. The nucleus and the coda constitute the rhyme. There is no syllable without the nucleus, the presence of the onset and the coda depends on the phonotactic rules of a particular language.

Syllables can be open, when ending in a vowel (V, CV), closed, ending in a consonant (VC, CVC), covered, with a consonant for an onset (CV, CVC), uncovered, with no onset (V,VC). Light, with a short vowel like [ ə ] or [ i ]

or [ u] and no consonant to follow, and heavy, with a long vowel or a diphthong, or a short vowel with a consonant to follow. Heavy syllables attract stress; they become stressed, while light syllables are unstressed.

The majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function. Now we shall consider two very important functions of the syllable.

The first function we should mention is known to be the constitutive function of the syllable. It lies in its ability to be a part of a word or a word itself. The syllable forms language units of greater magnitude, that is, words, morphemes and utterances. In this respect two things should be emphasized. First, the syllable is the unit within the relations between the distinctive features of the phonemes and their acoustic correlates are revealed. Second, within a syllable (or a sequence of syllables) prosodic characteristics of speech are realized, which form stress-pattern of a word and the rhythmic and intonation structures of an utterance. In sum, the syllable is a specific minimal structure of both segmental and suprasegmental features.

The other function of the syllable is its distinctive function. In this respect the syllable is characterized by its ability to differentiate words and word-forms. To illustrate this, a set of minimal pairs should be found so that qualitative and quantitative peculiarities of certain allophones should indicate the beginning or the end of the syllable: a name - an aim, ice-cream - I scream.

Summarizing we might say that at the functional level of description the syllable could be conceived as a smallest pronounceable unit with potential linguistic importance. That is why it reveals its functional value occasionally.

By way of conclusion we could enumerate the following peculiarities of the syllabic structure of English which should arrest the learner’s attention:

1) syllabic boundary normally runs after a long vowel: la-dy, sai-lor, la-ter, spea-ker;

2) in case of a short stressed vowel the following consonant joins it to form a closed syllable, and the boundary goes within or after the consonant: pit-y, bett-er, mon-ey, rack-et;

3) the sonorants [ l ], [ m ], [ n ] are syllabic if they are preceded by noise consonants, for example: litt- le, bloss-om, sudd-en;

4) there cannot be more than one vowel (a diphthong or a monophthong) within one syllable;

5) CV(C) structure with a single onset consonant followed by a vowel is basic for human language;

6) word final consonants are normally of weak-end type.

Questions and tasks:

1. What is a syllable?

2. What parts does a syllable consist of?

3. Types of syllables.

4. Functions of syllables.

5. Peculiarities of the syllabic structure of English.