SYLLABLE
1. Definition
A syllable is formed by the sounds that result from one chest pulse. People often find it
difficult when it comes to defining what a syllable is, but most of them can count how many
syllables there are in a sentence. Syllables may be defined phonetically and phonologically.
Phonetically, syllables are usually described as consisting of a center that has little or no
obstruction to airflow and which sounds comparatively loud; before and after this, airflow will
be obstructed and/or a less loud sound. Looking at them from the phonological point of view is
looking at the possible combinations of English phonemes; the study of the possible phoneme
combinations of a language is called phonotactics. It is simplest to start by looking at what can
occur at the beginning of the first word when we begin to speak after a pause. Since no word
begins with more than three consonants, we find that the word usually begins with a vowel, or
with less than three consonants. In the same way, how a word ends when it is the last word
spoken before a pause can be with a vowel, or with one, two, three, or four consonants. But we
may find in a small number of cases four consonants. Since no current word ends with more than
four consonants. Einar Haugen (l956: 216) proposed a simpler meaning, that is- the syllable be
defined as the smallest unit of recurrent phonemic sequence.
2. Syllable structure
According to Pike and Pike (1947, 78), the structure of syllables is not a series of sounds equally
related, like beads on a string, but rather an overlapping series of layers of bricks. The various
layers of the syllable have distinct phonetic, distributional, and grammatical characteristics.
If a syllable consists of a single vowel in isolation (e.g. the words ‘are’ ɑːr and ‘or’ ɔːr) is called
a minimum syllable. These are preceded and followed by silence. Isolated sounds such as ʃ, to
ask for silence, or m, which is indicated an agreement, must also be regarded as syllables. In
addition to the vowel, a syllable may consist of one or more consonants that exist on either one
or both sides of the vowel. In some languages like Japanese, most often the syllable is composed
of one consonant followed by one vowel, which is called syllabic languages. In syllabic
languages, each syllable is represented by syllabary (a symbol or a set of written characters
representing syllables and serving the purpose of an alphabet) in the writing system. The word
YAMAHA from the Japanese language for instance includes three syllables: YA, MA, and HA.
As a result, we can say that the syllable structure of most Japanese syllables is quite simple, that
is Consonant + Vowel (CV).
Most languages are, however, alphabetic in that symbols (called characters or letters) in their
orthography represent sound segments or phonemes, instead of representing syllables. The
consonants and vowels in any of these languages are organized in a linear pattern to represent
syllables, words, sentences, and so on. Arabic and Hebrew, on the other hand, tend to line up
their consonants and superscribe or subscribe their vowels as diacritics or sporadic features
beneath or above their consonants. As a result, Arabic and Hebrew are referred to as betagamic
rather than alphabetic languages. Many of the world's most well-known languages, including
English, are alphabetic in the sense that their orthography represents both vowels and consonants
as letters. Words in such languages are made up of one or more syllables. A syllable is a
phonological unit made up of one or more phonemes. Each syllable has a nucleus, which is
typically a vowel (but which may be a syllabic liquid or nasal). The nucleus may be preceded by
one or more syllable onset phonemes and followed by one or more coda segments. Some
syllables have an onset (have one or more consonants preceding the centre of the syllable) such
as ‘bar’ /bɑːr/, ‘key’ /ki:/, and ‘more’ /mɔːr/. Some syllables have a coda (end with one or more
consonants) such as ‘am’ /æm/, ‘ought’ /ɔ:t/, and ‘ease’ /i:z/. While some syllables have both
onset and coda, such as ‘ran’ /ræn/, ‘sat’ /sæt/, and ‘fill’ /fɪl/. The alphabetic language English
has a complicated syllable structure. If the first syllable of the word in question begins with a
vowel (any vowel may occur, though ʊ is rare) we say that this initial syllable has a zero onset.
If the syllable begins with one consonant, that initial consonant may be any consonant phoneme
except ŋ; ʒ is rare. If there is no final consonant, we say that there is a zero coda. When there is
one consonant only, this is called the final consonant. Now, we will look at the syllable
structure of English in the table below.
SYLLABLE STRUCTURE
V
CV
CCV
CCCV
CVC
CCVC
CCCVC
CCCVCC
VC
VCC
VCCC
CVCC
CVCCC
CCCVCCC
CCVCC
EXAMPLE
I /aɪ/
Key /ki:/
Tree /tri:/
Spree /spri:/
Seek /si:k/
Speak /spi:k/
Scram /skræm/
Striped /straɪpt/
An /æn/
Ant /ænt/
Ants /ænts/
Pant /pænt/
Pants /pænts/
Splints /splɪnts/
Stamp /stæmp/
The symbol C was used to represent consonants in the table above, while the symbol V was used
to represent vowels. It's worth noting that English has at least fifteen different types of syllables:
In this regard, it is worth noting that in alphabetic languages, the number of vowels in a word can
be used as an index for determining the number of syllables in that word. A close examination of
the syllable structures above reveals that consonant clusters can occur in both syllable-initial and
syllable-final positions in English (i.e., as onset or coda). Furthermore, consonant clusters in
English are not limited to two consonants. A CCCVC syllable is formed when three consonants
cluster together at the beginning of a word, such as a street. Another interesting observation is
that in English, vowels can initiate syllables. Persian, on the other hand, has a unique syllable
structure. On the one hand, vowels cannot be used to begin Persian syllables; even words that
appear to begin with a vowel include the glottal stop /ʔ/ as the syllable onset. In Persian,
however, syllable-initial consonant clusters are not possible. Furthermore, syllable-final
consonant clusters in Persian typically contain no more than two consonants. As a result, the
majority of Persian syllables fall into one of the three-syllable structures. (i.e., CV, CVC, or
CVCC) as presented in the table below. Now we will look at the Persian examples in the table
below:
PERSIAN SYLLABLES
CV
CVC
CVCC
EXAMPLE
ba /ba:/ meaning with
toop /tu:p/ meaning ball
satr /sætr/ meaning line
abr /ʔæbr/ meaning cloud
The differences in syllable structure between Persian and English are to blame for a large portion
of Iranian EFL learners' pronunciation issues. In fact, many Iranian EFL students add the vowel
/e/ to many monosyllabic English words to make them easier to pronounce. Furthermore,
because Persian syllables cannot be started with vowels, many Iranian EFL students begin
pronouncing vowel-initial English syllables with the consonant /ʔ/. Penglish is a term that is
sometimes used to refer to Persian pronunciations of English words. As a result of such
mispronunciations, some Iranian EFL students render many monosyllabic English words as bior tri-syllabic. Take the following examples:
EXAMPLE
Out
Tree
Dress
Street
Sky
PRONUNCIATION
/aʊt/
/triː/
/dres/
/striːt/
/skaɪ/
MISPRONUNCIATION
/ʔaʊt/
/teri:/
/deres/
/ʔesteri:t/
/ʔeskaɪ/
3. Syllable division
There are still issues with the syllable description: one unanswered question is how we decide on
the division of syllables when we find a connected sequence of them, as we do in normal speech.
It is common for one or more consonants at the end of one word to combine with one or more
consonants at the beginning of the next word, resulting in a consonant sequence that could not
occur in a single syllable. We'll start with two words that are simple examples of the problem of
dividing adjacent syllables. Most English speakers believe that the word ‘morning' /mɔː.nɪŋ/ has
two syllables, but we need a way to determine whether the syllable division should be mɔː and
nɪŋ, or mɔːn and ɪŋ. The word ‘extra’ /ek.strə/ is a more difficult case. One issue is that some
definitions consider the s in the middle, between k and t, to be a syllable, which most English
speakers would reject. They believe the word contains two syllables. The more contentious issue,
however, is where the two syllables should be divided; the options are (using the symbol . to
signify a syllable boundary):
i.
ii.
e.kstrə
ek.strə
iii.
iv.
v.
eks.trə
ekst.rə
ekstr.ə
How will we decide on a division? There is no single rule that will tell us what to do without
causing problems.
The maximal onsets principle is one of the most widely accepted guidelines. This principle
states that when two syllables are divided, any consonants between them should be attached to
the right-hand syllable as much as possible, rather than the left. In our first example, the word
"morning" would be divided as mɔː.nɪŋ. If we just used this rule, we'd have to divide 'extra' as (i)
e.kstrə, but we know that an English syllable cannot begin with kstr. As a result, our rule must
state that consonants are assigned to the right-hand syllable to the greatest extent possible within
the constraints governing syllable onsets and codas. This means we must reject (i) e.kstrə due to
its impossible onset, and (v) ekstr.ə due to its impossible coda. Then we must choose between
(ii), (iii), and (iv). The maximal onsets rule forces us to make a decision (ii). However, numerous
issues remain. How should words like 'better' bet.ər be divided? The maximal onsets principle
instructs us to place the t on the right-hand syllable, yielding bet.ər, but this means that the first
syllable is analyzed as be. However, we never find isolated syllables that end with one of the
vowels, so this division is impossible. As a result, the maximal onsets principle must be modified
to allow a consonant to be assigned to the left syllable if doing so prevents one of the vowels
from occurring at the end of a syllable. The word can then be analyzed as bet.ər, which appears
to be more satisfactory. There are still some words that cause us problems, such as ‘carry' kær.i,
if we divide the word as kæ.ri, we get a syllable-final æ, but if we divide it as kær.i, we get a
syllable-final r, and both of these are non-occurring in BBC pronunciation. We must choose the
lesser of two evils here, and the preferable solution is to divide the word as kær.i, because this
division would be natural in the many rhotic accents of English.
Another solution is to say that when one consonant stands between vowels and it is difficult to
assign the consonant to one syllable or the other - as in 'better' and 'carry' - the consonant belongs
to both syllables. Phonologists refer to a consonant in this situation as ambisyllabic.
SYLLABIFICATION
There are essentially two theories about the level of syllabic demarcation, as demonstrated by
Noske (1982) and Clements and Keyser (1983). According to Noske (266), "rules that insert,
delete, or change the position of vowels in a string must precede rules of syllable structure
assignment and thus must precede all rules that refer to syllable structure." What this means is
that the syllable must be delineated later in the rule application process. Noske summarized his
point as follows: (1) syllabification occurs at a later stage, after the application of the truncation
rule; and (2) once the initial syllabification occurs, (re-) syllabification occurs persistently.
According to Hoard (1971: 136), syllabification occurs after stress assignment and even after the
major phonological rules have been applied.
The syllabification proposed by Kahn (1976) and Selkirk (1982) among others contains the
following three stages: (1) Identify (-l-syllabic) and associate one (-l-syllabic) to one syllable; (2)
Put maximal onset cluster before (+syllabic); (3) Put maximal coda cluster after (+ syllabic).
References
Birjandi, P., & Salmani-Nodoushan, M. A. (2005). An Introduction to Phonetics. Tehran:
Zabankadeh Publications.
Cairns, C. E., & Raimy, E. (2011). Handbook of the Syllable. Leiden: Brill.
Roach, P. (2009). English Phonetics and Phonology (A practical course). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Sung, L. Y. (2008). Syllable Structure and Syllabification. 9-42.