Lecture 6

Plan

The Syllable

The main functions of intonation (according to David Crystal)

1. Emotional – to express a wide range of attitudinal meanings.

2. Grammatical – to mark grammatical contrasts.

3. Information structure – to convey what is new and what is already known in the meaning of an utterance.

4. Textual – to construct larger than utterance stretches of information.

5. Psychological – to organize language into units that are more easily perceived and memorized.

6. Indexical – to serve as markers of personal identity.

1. The syllable as an integral part of the word. Types of syllables in English.

2. The syllable formation theories.

3. Basic rules of syllabification in English.

4. Division into syllables in writing.

1. The syllableis a group of sounds that are pronounced together. The syllable is one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted of utterance unit which may be a commonly recognized subdivision of a word.

The problem of the syllabic structure of words has two aspects:

1) syllable formation(складоутворення)

2) syllable division/separation (складоподіл).

Articulatorily,the syllable is the minimal articulatory unit of the utterance. Auditorily,the syllable is the smallest unit of perception: the listener identifies the whole of the syllable and after that the sounds which it contains. Phonologicallyit is a structural unit which consists of a sequence of one or some phonemes of a language in numbers and arrangements permitted by the given language. Phonologically it performs three functions:

1. The constitutive function(конститутивна функція): syllables constitute words through the combination of their stress-loudness, duration-length, pitch-tone.

2. The distinctive function(смислорозрізнювальна / дистинктивна функція): the difference in the place of a syllabic boundary differentiates the meanings of the words and phrases:

e.g. a 'name – an 'aim; kids 'kin - kid 'skin; my 'train - might 'rain

3. The identificatory function (ідентифікативна функція): the listener can understand the exact meaning of the utterance only when the correct syllabic boundary is perceived: e.g. peace talks - pea stalks.

In English the syllable is formed:

1) by any vowel alone or in combination with one or more consonants - not more than 3 preceding and not more than 4 following it, e.g. are [a:], we [wi:], it [it], sixths [siksӨs].

2) by a word final sonorants [n], [l], [m] immediately preceded by a consonant: e.g. rhythm ['rið. m], garden I'ga:. dn].

According to the placement of vowels and consonants the following types of syllables are distinguished:

1. Fully open	V ore, or
2. Fully closed (V between C)	CVC fat CCVC place CVCC fact CCCVCC street CVCCC facts CVCCCC sixths
3. Covered at the beginning (one C or a sequence of C precede a vowel)	CV too CCV spy CCCV straw
4. Covered at the end (one C or more complete the syllable)	VC on VCC act VCCC acts

Structurally, the commonest types of the syllable in English are VC; CVC.

Syllables can be also designated:

1) by the position in the word:

from the beginning - INITIAL (початковий), MEDIAL (серединний), FINAL (фінальний/кінцевий) or

from the end - ULTIMATE (останній), PENULTIMATE (передостанній/другий від кінця), ANTEPENULTIMATE (третій від кінця);

2) by the position in relation to stress:

PRETONIC (переднаголошений), TONIC (наголошений), POSTTONIC (післянаголошений)

Any syllable which is not tonic is ATONIC (ненаголошений).

e.g. tre - men - dous

initial medial final

antepenultimate penultimate ultimate

pretonic tonic posttonic

2. There have been suggested several theories to explain the mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division in different languages.

The first theory in chronological order is the chest pulse/breath puff (теорія видиху). According to this theory, syllables are formed by breath-puffs. At present this theory is considered as not scientifically grounded; it has been proved experimentally that speakers take a new breath at the end of a syntagm and no increase of breath force necessarily accompanies every syllable.

The second in chronological order comes the relative sonority theory/the prominence theory (теорія відносної сонорності). It is based upon the fact that each sound has a different carrying power which is based on their sonority. The sonority of a sound is its relative loudness compared to other sounds, everything else (pitch, etc.) being equal.

The creator of this theory, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, has proved that the least sonorous sounds which have the least carrying power, are those for which the mouth is closed (voiceless oral stops), while the most sonorous sounds are those for which the mouth is wide open (low vowels). All other sounds are ranked in between these two extreme points of the sonority scale: (from the highest degree to the lowest):

1. Low vowels (a:, ……).

2. High vowels (i:, i ……)

3. Semivowels (j, w)

4. Liquids (l, r)

5. Nasals (m, n, ŋ)

6. Fricatives (voiced) (v, z, ð)

7. Fricatives (voiceless) (f, Ө, s)

8. Oral stops (voiced) (b, d, g)

9. Oral stops (voiceless) (p, t, k).

By this theory the syllable is treated as the combination of a more sonorous sound with a less sonorous one. All the sounds with the greatest degree of sonority (vowels and sonorants) are at the peak of the syllable, by which the syllable may be marked as a unit, because the rest of the sounds surrounding the peak cling to it.

The sonority theory helps establish the number of syllables in a word, but it's difficult to find the syllable boundary using this syllable as it doesn't explain the mechanism of syllable division.

The muscular tension theory (теорія м’язового напруження) was put forward by the French linguist Michaelle Grammont and supported and further developed by the Russian linguist Lev V. Scherba.

Academician Lev Volodymyrovych Scherba explained syllable formation by muscular tension impulses and three types of consonants. In speaking, muscular tension impulses follow one another. Each impulse has its strongest point - the peak of prominence, - and its weakest prominence - the valley of prominence. Valleys of prominence correspond to points of syllabic division. The end of one syllable and the beginning of the next one can be ascertained by determining the type of consonants which take part in forming the syllables.

Consonants may be pronounced:

(1) initially strong - the beginning of a consonant may be more energetic, while the end may be weaker;

(2) finally strong - the beginning of the consonant may be weak, and its end – more energetic;

(3) geminate or double - both the beginning and the end are energetic with a weakening of muscular tension in the middle, acoustically, they give the impression of two consonants.

The more energetic part of a consonant is attached to a vowel, so that initially strong C occurs at the end of a close syllable, while finally strong C occurs at the beginning of a syllable. This theory again does not give a complete explanation of the syllable division mechanism.

The problem of syllable formation and syllable division in English is open for further investigation.

3. The division of a word into syllables is called syllabification. The question of syllabification in English is controversial: different phoneticians hold different views about it. It is generally agreed that phonetic syllable divisions must be such as to avoid (as far as possible) creating consonant clusters which are not found in words in isolation. Thus it may be argued that candy should be ['kæn. di] or ['kænd. i] but not ['kæ. ndi] since [nd] is not a possible initial consonant cluster in English. This principle is called the phonotactic constraint(фонотактичне обмеження) on syllabification.

The following rules of phonetic(spoken) syllable divisionare adopted in LPD-2000:

1. A syllable boundaryis found wherever there is a word boundary,and also coincides with the morphological boundary between elements in a compound:

displace [,dls 'pleis], become [bi 'k m], countless ['kaunt ləs], hardware ['ha:d weə]

2. Consonantsare syllabified with whichever of the two adjacent vowels is more strongly stressed, e.g. farmer ['fa:m ə], agenda [ə 'd3ənd ə].

If they are both unstressed, it goes with the leftward one: e.g. cinema ['sin əm ə], delicious [di 'liS əs], deliberate [di 'lib ər ət].

3. The English diphthongsare unisyllabic, they make one vowel phoneme, while the so ­called triphthongs are disyllabic, because they consist of a diphthong + the neutral vowel/schwa:

table science flower

CV-CS CV-VSC CSV-V

4. The English affricates [t ], [d3] cannot be split: catching ['kæt. iŋ].

4. Phonetic (spoken) syllables must not be confused with orthographic (written) syllables. An orthgraphic syllable is a group of letters in spelling. Syllables in writing are also called syllabographs.

When a word is split across two lines of writing, it should be broken at an orthographic syllable boundary. Parts of phonetic and orthographic syllables do not always coincide: worker ['w3:k.ə] CVC - V = two phonetic syllables and one syllabograph.

A most general rule claims that division of words into syllables in writing is based on the morphological principlewhich demands that the part of a word which is separated should be either a prefix, or a suffix or a root (morphograph), e.g. pic - ture ['pik tS ə].

Compound wordscan be divided according to their meaning: hot -dog; spot-light.

It is not possible to divide a word within a phonetic syllable.

A suffix of two syllables such as -ABLE, -ABLY, -FULLY cannot be divided in writing, e.g. reli-able, lov-ably, beauti-fully. If there are two or three consonants before - ING, these consonants may be separated in writing: gras-ping, puz-zling.

With the exception of -LY, a word cannot be divided so that an ending of two letters such as -ED, -ER, -IC begins the next line, e.g. worked, teacher, hectic, BUT: cold-ly, bold-ly.

A word of one phonetic syllable, a word of less than five letters cannot be divided into syllabographgs, e.g. piece [pi:s], time [taim].

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11