The syllable structure of the word

3

The
Syllabic Structure of English Words

Phonemes
are rarely pronounced in isolation, they usually occur in sequences.
Sound sequences are broken up into smaller units known as syllables,
which are the minimal units of sounding speech.

A
syllable may consist of one or a number of phonemes, i.e. it may be
formed by any vowel (alone or in combination with consonants) or by a
word-final sonorant preceded by a consonant. A speech sound which is
capable of forming a syllable is called syllabic. It is the most
sonorous sound in the syllable and makes up the peak of prominence
(the centre of the syllable, the nucleus). Speech sounds which are
not capable of forming syllables are called non-syllabic. The
consonants which precede the peak are called the onset and those
which follow it are called the coda. J.Kenyon defines the syllable as
“one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of
utterance, which may be a word (e.g. man), or a commonly recognized
subdivision of a word (e.g. [ɪƞ-glɪʃ]) or wordform (e.g.
[leɪ-tǝ].”

The
syllabic structure of words may be graphically represented by the
letter V standing for a vowel and the letter C standing for a
consonant. The syllabic sonorant is represented by S.

Every
syllable has a definite structure. A syllable which begins in a
consonant is called covered, a syllable which begins in a vowel is
called uncovered. A syllable which ends in a consonant is called
closed, a syllable which ends in a vowel is called open. There are
four
main types of syllables:

V
– uncovered, open, or fully open, e.g. or [o:], I [aɪ];

VC
– uncovered, closed, e.g. it [ɪt], add [æd];

CV
– covered, closed, e.g. see [si:], no[nou];

CVC
– covered, closed, or fully closed, e.g. catch [kæʧ], pit [pɪt].

In
English the typical and the most fundamental syllabic structure is of
CVC type, in Russian CV types are more common than VC types.

There
are a great number of variants in the syllabic structure which are
formed by increasing the number of consonants in the initial and
final positions, as in:

VCC
(and, eggs, oaks), VCCC (ends, acts), CCV (blue, grow), CCCV (spray,
stray), CVCC (cats, bolt), CVCCC (facts, minds), CCVC (sleep,
shrewd), CCVCC (stoves, flex), CCVCCC (clasps, sphinx), CCCVC
(street, splash), CCCVCC (splint, splashed), CCCVCCC (splints).

English
and Russian have almost an equal number of syllabic models: 23 vs 21.
Though the same structures are used in both languages, their
frequency of occurrence is different. Some of them are extremely rare
in Russian, while in English they are in common use. A specific
English feature is that /l,m,n,r/ may become syllabic after a
consonant. The types of syllabic structures formed by sonorants: S:
[æp-l], [bʌt-n]; CS: [teɪ-bl], [ga:-dn]; CSC: [neɪ-ʃnz],
[ou-pnz], SC: [dɪd-nt], [plez-nt]. In Russian sonorants are
non-syllabic.

As
to the number of consonants before the peak of the syllable, the
maximum number in English is three: /s/+/p,t,k/+/r,l,w,j/, e.g.
street, squash, splash.

Russian
enjoys greater freedom of combinability in initial three-consonant
clusters, while in a four-consonant cluster the first sound must be
/в/: встряхнуть, всплакнуть вскрикнуть.
Initial consonant clusters in Russian represent grammatical prefixes.

Final
clusters in English are more complex than initial ones, they express
different grammatical meanings: plurality, tense, number, e.g. texts,
mixed, glimpsed. In Russian there can be no more than three
consonants at the end of the syllable ( монстр
–
an exception).

An
important point of difference in syllable formation is that in
Russian there is a close contact between the onset consonants and the
following vowels (CV), which affects the quality of vowels:
palatalized consonants make the following vowels closer( compare the
quality of the vowel [э] in the words жест and мел). In
English, like in all Germanic languages, there is a close contact
between the vowel and the coda consonants (VC), which affects the
length of vowels (positional length).

There
are several theories
which try to explain the mechanism of syllable formation and syllable
division.

The
oldest theory is the
so-called expiratory
theory
byR.H.Stetson, according to which each syllable corresponds to one
expiration. A word consists of as many syllables as there are such
expirations made when the word is uttered. The point where a new
expiration starts indicates the syllabic boundary of the word.

The
expiratory theory is strongly criticized in Russia and abroad.
According to the experimental data more than ten syllables can easily
be pronounced during one expiration.

The
sonority theory
propounded by Otto Jespersen is widespread among foreign linguists.
The term ‘sonority’ is understood by Otto Jespersen as ‘the
degree of perceptibility’.

All
speech sounds have different inherent sonority. The most sonorous are
open back vowels, the least sonorous are the voiceless stops. Otto
Jespersen classified all speech sounds according to seven levels of
sonority:

(1)
vowels;

(2)
semi-vowels /j,w,/;

(3)
sonorants /l,r,m,n,ƞ/;

(4)voiced
fricatives /v, z,ʒ,/;

(5)
voiced stops /b,d,g/;

(6)
voiceless fricatives /f,ѳ,s,ʃ,h/;

(7)
voiceless stops /p,t,k/.

In
any sequence the most sonorous sounds tend to form the peak of the
syllable. For example, the word “popular” consists of three
peaks, that is why it has three syllables.

The
sonority theory is also criticized because it cannot explain the
mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division. Besides this
theory is helpless in determining the number of syllables in such
words as “going”, “highest”, “speak”, etc. According to
the sonority theory the words “going” and “highest” consist
of one syllable, because there is only one peak (or rather plateau)
of prominence. But in reality the words have two syllables.

The
words “speak” and “star” have two peaks of prominence, hence,
there should be two syllables in them, but that is wrong because
fricatives are non-syllabic in English.

Prof.
L.V.Shcherba put forward another theory of syllable formation and
syllable division, which was further developed by his followers and
at present is known as the
theory of muscular tension.

According
to this theory a syllable is an arc of muscular tension, which is
weak in the beginning and in the end and strong in the middle. If a
syllable consists of a vowel, its strength increases in the
beginning, reaches the maximum at the peak and then gradually
decreases.

Consonants
within a syllable are characterized by different distribution of
muscular tension. Prof. Shcherba distinguishes the following types of
consonants:

1)
initially strong and finally weak, as in it,
on,
us;

2)
finally strong and initially weak, as in may,
tea,
no;

3)
double consonants (two similar sounds) which are strong at both ends
and weak in the middle, as in good
day,
misspell,
etc.

The
most energetic part of a consonant is attached to a vowel. For
instance, in the word “ten” there are two consonants: /t/ and
/n/. The consonant /t/ is finally strong, because its end is attached
to the vowel. The consonant /n/ is initially strong, because the
vowel is attached to its beginning. The syllable /ten/ may be
represented graphically as an arc, called an arc of muscular tension.
At the beginning /t/ is weak, at the end it gets stronger. The
muscular tension increases until it reaches its climax produced by
the vowel /e/. Then the muscular tension begins to decrease. The
sound /n/ is still strong at the beginning but gets quite weak at the
end. There are as many syllables in a word as there are arcs of
muscular tension.

The
syllabic boundary lies at a point where the consonant is the weakest.
Initially weak consonants constitute the beginning of a syllable.
Finally weak consonants constitute the end of a syllable.
Double-peaked consonants may only occur at the juncture of two
syllables, as in /gud-deɪ/, /mɪs-spel/, /ʌn-noun/, etc.

Prof.
N.I.Zhinkin’s investigation of the mechanism of syllable formation
and syllable division in Russian may serve as a basis for a general
theory of syllables. By using different complicated techniques Prof.
Zhinkin found out which speech organ causes a syllable to be formed.
This organ is the pharyngeal cavity. When the walls of the pharynx
are contracted, the passage through the pharyngeal cavity gets
narrower. This process increases the actual loudness of the sound and
this produces an arc of loudness. The peak of the syllable is louder
and higher in pitch than the onset and the coda. This theory
combines the level of production and the level of perception.

Prof.
Zhinkin has proved that the arc of loudness is due to the complex
work of all the speech organs. That is why Prof. Vassilyev suggests
that it would be more precise to call a syllable an “arc of
articulatory effort”. A syllable begins at a point where a new
articulatory effort starts and ends at a point where the articulatory
effort ends. So a syllable is a phonetic unit which is pronounced by
one articulatory effort accompanied by one muscular contraction,
which results acoustically and auditorily in one uninterrupted arc of
loudness.

Each
language has its own peculiarities in its syllabic structure. There
are a nmber of factors determining the rules for syllable division in
English. Syllable division in English is closely connected with the
checked or free character of the vowel in a stressed position. The
Sequence of CVCV may have different types of syllables depending on
the character of the vowel. In this case the syllable division is
governed by the following rules:

1)
The sequence of /’CVCV/ may include two open syllables if the
stressed vowel is a long monophthong or a diphthong, e.g. /si:-lɪƞ/,
/ʃu:-tǝ/, /meɪ-kǝ/, /nɪǝ-rǝ/. The syllable division in Russian
fully coincides with this pattern, as in both the languages the
consonants are strong at the end.

2)
The sequence of /’CVCV/ has a closed syllable and an open one
/CVC-V/ if the stressed vowel is a short monophthong, e.g. /pɪt-ɪ/,
/mer-ɪ/, /æp-l/, /ful-ɪ/.The first syllable remains closed because
short stressed vowels are checked, i.e. they should be immediately
followed by consonants. The results of instrumental analysis show
that the point of syllable division is inside the intervocalic
consonant. Syllables of this kind present a great difficulty to
Russian students because in similar Russian words there are two open
syllables. In English the intervocalic consonants of this type are
initially strong while in Russian they are finally strong. Cf.: Ма-ня
— /mʌn-ɪ/, Си-ти — /sɪt-ɪ/.

3)
Short and long monophthongs and diphthongs make for an open type of
syllable if they are unstressed and are separated from the
neighbouring vowels by only one consonant, e.g. /ri:-ækt/, /bɪ-gɪn/,
/mju:-zɪǝm/, /a:-tɪstɪk/.

Phonetic
and orthographic syllables should not be confused. Sometimes they
coincide (ear-ly — /ǝ:-lɪ/, late-ly — /leɪt-lɪ/), sometimes they
do not (art-ist-ic — /a:-tɪs-tɪk/, driv-er — /draɪ-vǝ/, lat-er —
/leɪ-tǝ/. Division of words into syllables in writing is based on
morphological principles. The part of a word which is separated
should be either a prefix, or a suffix, or a root.

The
syllabic structure of English performs three main functions:

1)
constitutive, 2) distinctive, 3) recognitive. The
constitutive function
consists in the fact that syllables constitute the material forms of
all the words, phrases and sentences.

The
distinctive function
of the syllabic structure includes differences in both syllable
formation and syllable division. Presence or absence of a syllable in
one and the same position, as well as different syllabic boundaries
may differentiate one word (or phrase, or sentence) from another word
(or phrase, or sentence). Here are some phonological oppositions of
presence vs absence of a syllable in the same position in a minimal
pair: /bet/ — /betǝ/, /dri:m/ — /dri:mɪ/, /sli:p/ — /ǝ’sli:p/.

The
word-distinctive function of syllable division may be illustrated by
the example /naɪ-treɪt/ — /naɪt-reɪt/ (nitrate – night-rate).
The number of combinations of words distinguished from each other by
different syllabic boundaries is rather considerable: a name – an
aim, I scream – ice-cream, a nice house – an ice house, I saw her
eyes – I saw her rise, that’s tough – that stuff, confined –
can find, a notion – an ocean, I saw th meat, I saw them eat, etc.

The
recognitive function
of the syllabic structure manifests itself in the fact that the right
syllabic boundary makes it easier to recognize words, phrases and
sentences. Compare the following:

Correct
pronunciation Wrong pronunciation

happy
/hæp-ɪ/ /hæ-pɪ/

Stand
up! /stænd-ʌp/ /stæn-dʌp/

an
apple /ǝn-æpl/ /ǝ-næpl/

at
eight /ǝt-eɪt/ /ǝ-teɪt/

The
violation of the recognitive function results in the following:

1)
wrong syllable division produces a strong foreign accent;

2)
it produces a comic impression on native speakers;

3)
it hampers the process of communication.

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