A syllable (Ancient Greek: συλλαβή) is a unit of
organization for a sequence of speech sounds. It is typically made up of a
syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional
initial and final margins (typically, consonants).
Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its
prosody, its poetic meter, its stress patterns, etc.
A word that consists of a single syllable (like English cat) is called a
monosyllable (such a word is monosyllabic), while a word consisting of two syllables (like monkey) is called
a disyllable (such a word is disyllabic). A word consisting of three syllables (such as indigent) is called
a trisyllable (the adjective form is trisyllabic). A word consisting of more than three syllables (such as
intelligence) is called a polysyllable (and could be described as polysyllabic), although this term is often
used to describe words of two syllables or more.
Syllable structure
The general structure of a syllable consists of the following segments:
- Onset (obligatory in some languages, optional or even restricted in others)
- Rhyme
- Nucleus (obligatory in all languages)
- Coda (optional in some languages, highly restricted or prohibited in others)
tree representation of a CVC syllable
In some theories of phonology, these syllable structures are displayed as tree diagrams
(similar to the trees found in some types of syntax).
The syllable nucleus is typically a sonorant, usually making a vowel sound, in the form of a
monophthongs, diphthong, or triphthong, but sometimes sonorant consonants like [l] or [r]. The syllable
onset is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the syllable coda (literally 'tail') is the sound or
sounds that follow the nucleus. The term rhyme covers the nucleus plus coda. In the one-syllable English word cat,
the nucleus is a, the onset c, the coda t, and the rhyme at. This syllable can be abstracted as a
consonant-vowel-consonant syllable, abbreviated CVC.
Generally, every syllable requires a nucleus. Onsets are extremely common, and some languages require all syllables to have an
onset. (That is, a CVC syllable like cat is possible, but a VC syllable such as at is not.) A coda-less syllable of
the form V, CV, CCV, etc. is called an open syllable, while a syllable that has a coda (VC, CVC, CVCC, etc.) is called a
closed syllable (or checked syllable). All languages allow open syllables, but some, such as Hawaiian, do not have closed syllables.
A heavy syllable is one with a branching rhyme or a branching
nucleus — this is a metaphor, based on the nucleus or coda having lines that branch in a tree diagram. In some languages,
heavy syllables include both VV (branching nucleus) and VC (branching rhyme) syllables, contrasted with V, which is a light
syllable. In other languages, only VV syllables (ones with a long vowel or diphthong) are
heavy, while both VC and V syllables are light. The difference between heavy and light frequently determines which syllables
receive stress—this is the case in Latin and
Arabic, for example. In moraic theory, heavy
syllables are said to have two moras, while light syllables are said to have one. Japanese is generally described this way.
In other languages, including English, a consonant may be analyzed as acting
simultaneously as the coda of one syllable and the onset of the following syllable, a phenomenon known as ambisyllabicity.
Examples occurring in Received Pronunciation include words such as arrow
[ˈærəʊ], error [ˈerə], mirror [ˈmɪrə], borrow [ˈbɒrəʊ], burrow [ˈbʌrəʊ],
which can't be divided into separately pronounceable syllables: neither [æ]
nor [ær] is a possible independent syllable, and likewise with the other
short vowels [e ɪ ɒ ʌ].
Syllables and suprasegmentals
The domain of suprasegmental features is the syllable and not a specific sound,
that is to say, they affect all the segments of a syllable:
Sometimes syllable length is also counted as a suprasegmental feature; for example,
in most Germanic languages, long vowels may only exist with short consonants and vice versa. However, syllables can be analyzed
as compositions of long and short phonemes, as in Finnish and Japanese, where consonant gemination and vowel length are
independent.
Syllables and phonotactic constraints
Phonotactic rules determine which sounds are allowed or disallowed in each part of the
syllable. English allows very complicated syllables; syllables may begin with up to
three consonants (as in string or splash), and occasionally end with as many as four (as in prompts). Many
other languages are much more restricted; Japanese, for example, only allows /n/ and a
chroneme in a coda, and has no consonant clusters at all, as the onset is composed of at most
one consonant.
There are languages that forbid empty onsets, such as Hebrew, Arabic, and many varieties of German (the names transliterated
as "Israel", "Abraham", "Omar", "Ali" and "Abdullah", among many others, actually begin with semiconsonantic glides or with
glottal or pharyngeal consonants).
Syllabification
-
Syllabification is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written. In most languages, the actually
spoken syllables are the basis of syllabification in writing too. However, due to the very weak correspondence between sounds and
letters in the spelling of modern English, for example, written syllabification in English has to be based mostly on etymological
i.e. morphological instead of phonetic principles. English "written" syllables therefore do not correspond to the actually spoken
syllables of the living language.
Syllabification also describes the process of a consonant becoming a syllable nucleus.
Syllables and stress
Syllable structure often interacts with stress. In Latin, for example, stress is regularly
determined by syllable weight, a syllable counting as heavy if it has at least one of
the following:
- a long vowel in its nucleus
- a diphthong in its nucleus
- one or more coda(e)
In each case the syllable is considered to have two moras.
Syllables and vowel tenseness
In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only
occur in closed syllables. Therefore, these vowels are also called checked vowels, as opposed to the tense vowels that are
called free vowels because they can occur in open syllables.
Syllable-less languages
The notion of syllable is challenged by languages that allow long strings of consonants without any intervening vowel or
sonorant. The Czech and Slovak Strč prst skrz krk, 'stick finger through throat' is a well-known example of this. Languages of the
Northwest coast of North America, including Salishan and Wakashan languages, are also famous for this. For instance, these Nuxálk (Bella Coola) words contain only obstruents:
- [ɬχʷtɬʦxʷ] 'you spat on me'
- [ʦ’ktskʷʦʼ] 'he arrived'
- [xɬpʼχʷɬtɬpɬɬs] 'he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant'
(Bagemihl 1991:589, 593, 627)
- [sxs] 'seal blubber'
In Bagemihl's survey of previous analyses, he finds that the word [ʦ’ktskʷʦ’] would have been parsed into 0, 2, 3, 5, or 6 syllables depending which analysis is used. One analysis
would consider all vowel and consonants segments as syllable nuclei, another would consider only a small subset as nuclei
candidates, and another would simply deny the existence of syllables completely.
This type of phenomenon has also been reported in Berber languages (such as Imdlawn
Tashlhiyt Berber) and Mon-Khmer languages (such as Semai, Temiar, Kammu). Even in English there are a few utterances that have
no vowels; for example, shh (meaning "be quiet") and psst (a sound used to attract attention).
Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber:
- [tftktst tfktstt] 'you sprained it and then gave it'
- [rkkm] 'rot' (imperf.) (Dell & Elmedlaoui 1985,
1988)
Semai:
- [kckmrʔɛːc] 'short, fat arms' (Sloan 1988)
See also
External links
References and recommended reading
- Bagemihl, Bruce (1991). "Syllable structure in Bella
Coola". Linguistic Inquiry 22: 589–646.
- Dell, F.; Elmedlaoui, M. (1985). "Syllabic consonants and syllabification in Imdlawn
Tashlhiyt Berber". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 7: 105-130.
(Cited in Bagemihl 1991).
- Dell, F.; Elmedlaoui, M. (1988). "Syllabic consonants in Berber: Some new evidence".
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 10: 1-17.
(Cited in Bagemihl 1991).
- Ladefoged,
Peter (2001). A course in phonetics, 4th edition, Fort Worth:
Harcourt College Publishers. ISBN 0-15-507319-2.
- Sloan, K. (1988). Bare-consonant reduplication: Implications for a prosodic theory of reduplication. In H. Borer (Ed.),
Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 7. Stanford, CA: Stanford Linguistics Association. (Cited
in Bagemihl 1991).
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