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The Syllable

A syllable is a unit of speech that contains a vowel sound and may be preceded and/or followed by consonant sounds. It is the smallest unit of sound that can convey meaning in a language. Syllables have structures that vary across languages but generally consist of an onset, nucleus, and coda. The nucleus is the obligatory vowel sound at the center of the syllable. The onset precedes and the coda follows the nucleus and are made up of optional consonant sounds. Languages impose different restrictions on what sounds can make up the onset, nucleus, and coda of syllables.

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20 views

The Syllable

A syllable is a unit of speech that contains a vowel sound and may be preceded and/or followed by consonant sounds. It is the smallest unit of sound that can convey meaning in a language. Syllables have structures that vary across languages but generally consist of an onset, nucleus, and coda. The nucleus is the obligatory vowel sound at the center of the syllable. The onset precedes and the coda follows the nucleus and are made up of optional consonant sounds. Languages impose different restrictions on what sounds can make up the onset, nucleus, and coda of syllables.

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oserobriton
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Syllable

A syllable is a part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and that is pronounced as a unit.
So, for example, ' book' has one syllable, and ' reading' has two syllables.

Every language manifests a particular way of combining its sounds to form meaningful words or
parts of words, called syllables. Each language puts certain restrictions on these possible
combinations. For example, in English we can't have a word which begins with a consonant
sequence bfj, zbf or tzp. When we analyse what restrictions (and regularities) are found in the
language under study, we are studying the syllable structure of that language. We can divide
words into one or more syllables. For example, tin has one syllable, brother has two, important
has three and computer has four syllables each.

A syllable is a group of one or more sounds. The essential part of a syllable is a vowel sound (V)
which may be preceded and/or followed by a consonant (C) or a cluster of consonants (CC or
CCC) (see below). Some syllables consist of just one vowel sound (V) as in I and eye/ai/, owe/ə/.
In English, a syllable can consist of a vowel preceded by one consonant (CV) as in pie/pai/, or by
two consonants (CCV) as in try/trai/, or by three consonants (CCCV) as in spry/sprai/. The
vowel of the syllable may also be followed by one consonant (VC) as in at/æt/, or by two
consonants (VCC) as in its/its/, or by three consonants (CVCCC) as in text/tekst/or by four
consonants (CVCCCC) as in texts/teksts/

Syllable structure

Syllables are often described as the phonological building blocks of words. Linguistically a
syllable is defined as a unit of speech that is made up of a syllable nucleus (usually a vowel) and
one or more optional phones. The syllable has two immediate constituents:
– onset
any consonant(s) that precede the nucleus
– rhyme
the nucleus and any consonant(s) that follow it

The rhyme is further divided into:

– nucleus
the most sonorous element (usually a vowel)
– coda
any consonant(s) that follow the nucleus

In the typical theory of syllable structure, the general structure of a syllable (σ) consists of three
segments. These segments are grouped into two components:

Onset (ω)

a consonant or consonant cluster, obligatory in some languages, optional or even restricted in


others

Rime (ρ)

right branch, contrasts with onset, splits into nucleus and coda

Nucleus (ν)

a vowel or syllabic consonant, obligatory in most languages

Coda (κ)

Consonant, optional in some languages, highly restricted or prohibited in others

The syllable is usually considered right-branching, i.e. nucleus and coda are grouped together as
a "rime" and are only distinguished at the second level.

All syllables have a peak 'P'.

The peak forms the core of the syllable.

The nucleus 'N' of the syllable includes the peak and an off-set 'Off' to the peak where the
semivowels occur.

The nucleus may also contain an onset to the peak where a glide may occur.

The next higher unit is called the rhyme 'R'.

The rhyme contains the nucleus or peak of the syllable and the coda 'C' of the syllable, which
is the final part of the syllable. The syllable contains the rhyme and it may contain an onset 'O',
which precedes the rhyme:

The nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. The onset is the sound or sounds
occurring before the nucleus, and the coda (literally 'tail') is the sound or sounds that follow the
nucleus. They are sometimes collectively known as the shell. The term rime covers the nucleus
plus coda. In the one-syllable English word cat, the nucleus is a (the sound that can be shouted or
sung on its own), the onset c, the coda t, and the rime at. This syllable can be abstracted as a
consonant-vowel-consonant syllable, abbreviated CVC. Languages vary greatly in the
restrictions on the sounds making up the onset, nucleus and coda of a syllable, according to what
is termed a language's Phonotactics.

A simple way of representing this structure is to with CVC – the syllable consists of a consonant,
a vowel and another consonant. The second example above (start) would be represented as
CCVCC and the last example (hurt) as CVCC.

When an Onset or Coda contains more than one consonant, it is described as complex.

The system looks like this, taking the syllable shrubs [/ʃrʌbz/] as our example because it has both
a complex consonant cluster onset (/ʃr/) and a similarly complex coda (/bz/):

The structure is, therefore, CCVCC.

The Rhyme is so called because it is this part of the syllable which allows a poetic rhyme as
in hatch, match and dispatch, for example. You may see it spelled as Rime in US texts. In our
example, it allows a rhyme with nubs or clubs (/nʌbz/ and /klʌbz/) because the same three
sounds are present: /ʌ/, /b/ and /z/.
In some analyses, e.g. Roach (op cit.), the Nucleus is referred to as the Peak. In some analyses,
too, especially of languages other than English, the system is seen branching to the left rather
than, as here, to the right so the Onset and Nucleus are considered together as the Body and the
Coda stands to the right.

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