Structural aspect of the English syllable

Syllable Construction in English

Syllable construction in English has the following 3 characteristic features:

1. Dependence on the type of consonant, determining the type of syllable, upon the duration of the preceding syllable.

2. The frequent use of syllabic sonorants.

3. The frequent use of unisyllabic sonorants.

1. In words of more than one syllable, a short stressed vowel requires an initially strong consonant after it. Thus, close syllables are formed in such words as the following:

Fu n ny [fʌn-i]

Ci t y [sit-i]

Mo n ey [mʌn-i]

Mu m my [mʌm-i]

The number of such words is very great in the English language. An open syllable instead of close one produces the impression of a strong Russian accent. In Russian, the most common type of syllable is an open one. Close syllables occur in polysyllabic words under special conditions. A sound sequence is similar to the English one and consists of a consonant + a vowel + a consonant + a vowel, will always result in 2 open syllables:

Фаня [фа-ня]

Сити [си-ти]

In English words with the stressed close syllables, the syllables cannot be pronounced separately because of the shortness of the vowel and the following consonant is added to the vowel when its articulation is still rather energetic. This presents a difficulty to Russians, who try to pronounced such words in two distinct and separate syllables: funny [fʌ-ni], [si-ti].

2. The second peculiarity of English syllabic construction is syllabic sonorants. In such cases, the first syllable is close, while the second syllable consists of a syllabic sonorant only: [litl], [bʌtn], [kotn], [mitn]. The plosive [t], [d] is blended with the following homographic [n] or [l] and the former sounds lose their explosion and the pause of the plosive is prolonged for the following sonorant. Words of this type present a difficulty for Russians, who have a tendency to make the first syllable open and to insert a vowel in the second syllable: [li-təl], [mi-dəl].

3. It is necessary to mention a type of syllable which is very characteristic of the English language, but does not occur in Russian. It is a close syllable with a s hort vowel and a cluster of consonants at the end: texts [teksts], breaths [breθs], sixth [sikθs], especially such combinations such as [θs], [nθs], [sθs], [sθs], [fθs], unfamiliar to Russians.

Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition of vowels and consonants. Vowels are always syllabic, they occupy a central position in the syllable. Consonants are non-syllabic and marginal. The sounds [w, r, j], despite their strong vocalic features, function as consonants, occurring only before the vowel: winter, reader, yard. The sounds [l, m, n] normally function as consonants in various sound combinations before the vowel. But in unstressed final position, when preceded by a noise consonant, they are syllabic: petal, blossom, lighten.

English short vowels [i, e, æ, ʌ, ɒ, ʊ, ə] historically never occur in stressed final position without the following consonant. In unstressed position the vowels [i, ə] can occur as final.

Consonants present particular interest in the study of the syllables, because it is due to the number and arrangement of consonants that the structure of the syllable varies. And it is largely due to consonants that we understand the utterance.

Depending on the position of consonants (C) in relation to the vowel (V), there are 4 types of syllables:

1. Open syllables (CV), when there is no consonant after the vowel: far, tie, sea

2. Closed syllables (VC), when the vowel is followed by a consonant: art, sit, life

3. Covered syllables (CV(C), when the vowel is preceded by a consonant: say, like, shore.

4. Uncovered syllables (V(C) when there is no consonant before the vowel: apt, eat, eight.

The fundamental syllable type in English is the closed syllable, whereas in Russian it is the open syllable.

As to the presence, number and arrangement of consonants there are 23 syllable patterns in English, such as V, VC, CVC, CV, CCVC, CCVCC, CCCVC, CCCVCC etc. the vowel may occur alone in a syllable or it may have up to 3 consonants before it and up to 4 consonants after it. The most frequent and fundamental pattern in English is CVC.

It is a feature of English that in initial position, before the vowel, there can be any consonant except [ŋ], no consonant combinations are possible with [ð, z, ʧ, ʤ] and such consonant clusters as [ mh, sr,sʃ, spw, fs,hr,stl ] cannot occur initially either.

J. O’Connor notes that final clusters are much more complex in English than initial ones. This is due to the fact that final clusters are used to express grammatical meanings of plurality, tense, ordinal number: texts, missed, glimpsed. In Russian initial clusters are more complex and more numerous than the final ones, because they represent grammatical prefixes [fskr, fspl, vzr, kst].

Phonotactic possibilities of English phonemes predetermine the rules of syllable division.

English historically short vowels under stress (checked vowels) occur only in a closed syllable. Checked vowels are always followed by a consonant. So the syllabic boundary never occurs after these vowels.

It lies after the following consonant, as in love-ly, twen-ty, quick-ly, hot-ly, good-ness or within it, if it is the only consonant between the checked vowel and the succeeding vowel: letter, big-ger, hot-ter, shil-ling.

The preceding and following vowels attract this consonant and consonant is split into two. In speech the consonant forms a close link between the two syllables. If a checked vowel is separated by one consonant from a syllabic sonant the boundary between the two syllables is also within the consonant: lit-tle, cot-ton, rhythm-m.

Historically long monophthongs, diphthongs and unstressed short monophthongs (free vowels) can occur both in the open and in the closed syllable: car, cart, ti-ny.

When a free vowel is separated from a succeeding vowel by only one consonant sound, syllable in which such a vowel occurs, is always open: i-dea, car-toon, e-rect.

When a post-stressed short vowel is separated from a succeeding vowel by a single consonant, the boundary is most probably, before the consonant, because the short vowel is free in unstressed position: fam-i-ly, pol-i-cy, pos-i-bil-i-ty.

When there is a cluster of consonants between two vowels, the place of the syllabic boundary is conditioned by whether this cluster is permitted at the beginning of words or not. If it does occur in initial position in English in the syllabic boundary is before it. If it does not, the boundary is between the consonants. For example, the cluster [gr] is used word-initially in English, therefore it can occur at the beginning of a syllable and the syllabic boundary is before the cluster: a-gree, re-gret.

The clusters [dm], [dv] do not occur word-initially and cannot occur at the beginning of a syllable. The syllabic boundary is therefore between the consonants constituting the clusters: ad-mit, ad-mire, ad-vice, ad-mission.

When two vowels are separated by more than two consonants as in ex-tra the boundary may be both before [s] and [t] because both [str] and [tr] occur at the beginning of words and [ks] can occur in final position.

The so called triphthongs in English are disyllabic combinations, because they contain two vowel phonemes: sci-ence, flo-wer.

In connection with the types of syllables from the viewpoint of syllable division it is necessary to emphasize that phonetic syllables must not be confused with orthographic syllables. Phonetic syllables are distinguished in the actual pronunciation of words. Orthographic syllables are used for the application of the so called reading rules. Syllables of one type do not coincide with syllables of the other. For instance, orthographic division of the following words are rang-ing, mak-er, al-ien, whereas their purely phonetic syllable division is ran-ging, ma-ker, a-lien. Phonetically disyllabic words like rhythm, middle, hour are treated in writing or print as indivisible monosyllabic.

The syllable is also the carrier of what is known as dynamic stress, i.e. variation in the force of utterance. Syllables may be classified according to their accentual weight as stressed and unstressed. The structure of an English syllable depends on whether it is stressed or not. The peak of the stressed syllable is always a vowel. In the unstressed syllable the peak may be a vowel or a sonant. When the peak of the stressed syllable is a short vowel, the syllable must be “ closed” by a consonant.

According to their length syllables may be short and long. The linguistic unit of syllable length is called the mora, which is equal to the duration of a short vowel sound or syllable. The duration of a long vowel sound or syllable is taken to be to two moras. In some languages, such as Latin, the position of word-stress, or accent is determined by counting the number of moras from the end of the word. The mora is also is the unit of quantitative meter in versification.

Questions:

1. On what levels can the syllable be studied?

2. What are the main theories of syllable?

3. What is a syllable? What are its functions?

4. What are the characteristic features of syllable construction in English?

5. What types of syllables are distinguished according to the position of consonants in relation to the vowel?

6. How many types of syllables are there according to the presence, number and arrangement of consonants?

7. What is the difference between the orthographic syllables and phonetic syllables?

8. How can the syllables be classified according to their accentual weight and according to their length?

Lecture 5

1. The nature of English word stress.

2. Degrees of stress.

3. Stress patterns in English.

4. Functions of stress.

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