Syllable as a phonological unit

Syllable as a phonological unit may be defined in the following way: it is a structural unit in phonology which consists of a vowel or of a vowel surrounded by consonants, grouped according to the rules of a particular language which performs certain functions. In the structure of a syllable two kinds of elements may be distinguished: nuclear and marginal. The nuclear elements may also be named “syllabic” and marginal – “non-syllabic”. The nuclear element is always present in a syllable that is why it is syllabic, i.e. it is able to form a syllable. It is universally true for any human language that vowels are always syllabic. Consonants are usually non-syllabic, but sometimes some sonorants may be the nucleus of the syllable. It is true for the English language when the sonorants /n, m, l/ can form a syllable with the other noise consonant in certain positions. So, the nucleus in an English syllable may be formed by a vowel or sonorants /n, m, l/. Other consonants are marginal or peripheral elements. The marginal elements to the left of the syllabic nucleus are called “onset” and the marginal elements to its right – “coda”. Nucleus plus coda both form the rhyme. It is usual to distinguish four structural types of syllables depending on the presence or absence of the elements in onsets or codas. When no consonant is present in a syllable coda, we have an open syllable, when there is some consonant in the coda, it is a closed syllable. When there are some consonants or a consonant in the syllable onset, we call such a syllable covered. An uncovered syllable is the syllable without any elements in its onset. It is also very important for the English language to distinguish heavy (or strong) and light (or weak) syllables. A heavy syllable contains a historically long vowel or diphthong or a historically short vowel with the following one or more consonants. As a rule, heavy syllables are stressed in English. A light syllable is a syllable which has a short reduced vowel /I, U, @/ without any consonant in the coda. Such syllables are usually unstressed in English.

Syllable formation

In human languages there are some universal features which are typical of any language. Such universal phonotactic rules can be named here: syllables exist in any language, open syllable is the basic syllable structure, sonority scale can be applied to any language, i.e. all the sounds may be classified from the most sonorous (vowels) to the least sonorous (strong voiceless stops). The last universal feature is the principle of Maximal Onset which means that if there are two possible ways syllable division, the best is the one which allows placing the maximal number of elements in the onset. The closest contact in an English syllable is observed between the vowel and the consonant which follows it. There the consonant influences the preceding vowel. In Russian it is the consonant in the onset which influences the following vowel. As for the possible number of elements in the onset we can conclude that for English it is up to three and for Russian it is four. The number of possible elements in the coda is four in English and three in Russian. The fundamental type of English syllable is the closed syllable, in Russian it is the open type the most frequent English syllable structure is covered. Those are the main generalizations about syllable formation.

Syllable division

A syllable is also considered from the point of view of syllable division. The problem of syllable division in English exists in case of 1) intervocalic consonants and 2) medial consonant clusters. The first problem may be illustrated by the word "city". The first stressed syllable should be closed because the historically short vowel should be checked by the following consonant. So, the conclusion follows: if a historically short stressed vowel is followed by a consonant plus a vowel, the syllabic boundary is inside the consonant following the stressed vowel (cit-ty). In this English syllable division rules are different from Russian (Си-ти). In case of two consonant cluster (agree, abrupt) the following rule is applied: if such cluster occurs initially (green, bright), it should not be divided. But e.g. /dm, bh/ do not occur initially in English that is why the clusters in words like (ad-mire, ab-hor) are divided by a syllable boundary.

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