What is syllable?

A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word;

I (pronoun) One syllable One vowel sound No surrounding consonants

Man One syllable One vowel sound Two surrounding consonants

Approaches to the analysis of the syllable structure Phonetic approaches to the analysis of the syllable:

The chest pulse theory The chest pulse theory studies the syllable on the basis of muscular effort. It defines the syllable in phonetic terms and says that a syllable is a group of sound segments uttered with one breath pulse.

The chest pulse theory thus claims that the number of syllables will be equal to the number of chest pulses in any given utterance.

This theory concludes that the syllable nuclei are the vowels This theory concludes that the syllable nuclei are the vowels. Consonantal sounds act as the onset (releasing factor) and closure (arresting factor) of the syllable,

The prominence theory or maximum sonority theory

This theory says that some sounds are intrinsically more sonorous than others and that each peak of sonority corresponds to the centre of a syllable.

The prominence theory thus argues that the number of syllables in an utterance will be equal to the number of sounds that are felt by native speakers as prominent or sonorous,

The structure of the syllable Structurally the syllable may be divided into three parts: the peak or nucleus, the onset and the coda. The peak is the most prominent part of the syllable. It contains the syllabic segment.

The onset of a syllable consists of all segments that precede the nucleus. The coda consists of all the syllablic segments that follow the peak. The peak and the coda of a syllable form a unit called the syllable core or rhyme.

In the word 'cat' / kæt /, /k/ is the onset, /æ/, /t/ is the coda.

Cairns and Feinstein (1982) have proposed the following organisation of the syllable structure tree diagram:

SYLLABLE STRUCTURE The syllable (conventionally marked as small Greek sigma: σ) has two immediate constituents (it “branches” into two elements, to put it in another way) – the Onset (O), which includes any consonants that precede the nuclear element (the vowel), and the Rhyme (R), which subsumes the nuclear element (the vowel) as well as any marginal elements (consonants) that might follow it. The Rhyme (R), in turn, further branches into Peak (P), also known as Nucleus (N), and Coda (Co). The Peak (Nucleus), as the designation suggests, represents the “nuclear” or most sonorous element in a syllable. The Coda includes all consonants that follow the Peak in a syllable. Syllable structure may be represented graphically by means of a “tree diagram” or “immediate constituent structure”.

Concepts Monosyllable means A word consisting of only one syllable. Polysyllable A word with more than two syllables Checked syllable Closed (checked) syllables are those that end in a consonant; Open (or unchecked) syllables (V, CV), if they end in a vowel

MINIMAL SYLLABLE In the case of cat /kæt/, the Onset, Peak and Coda each consists of one segment: the consonant (C) /k/ occupies the Onset, the vowel (V) /æ/ – the Peak, and the consonant /t/ is the Coda of this syllable. However, there are syllables in English where either or both marginal elements (i.e. O and/or Co) are absent – only the Peak is an obligatory element in all languages, and in English both the Onset and the Coda are optional. Onset Peak Coda sea /si:/ /s/ /i:/ Ø on /ɒn/ /ɒ/ /n/ eye /aɪ/ /aɪ/

Division A difficulty can be seen in ‘extra’ /ekstrǝ/. One problem is that by some definitions the /s/ in the middle , between /k/ and /t/, would be counted as a syllable, which most English speakers would reject. The most controversial issue relates to where the two syllables are to be divided: i- /e-kstrǝ/ ii- /ek-strǝ/ iii- /eks-trǝ/ iv- /ekst-rǝ/ v- /ekstr- ǝ/

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