Syllabic structure of English words: formation, division, functions

Syllable is the minimal grouping of vowels and consonants necessary for articulation and for storing strings of phonemes in the mental representation. May consist of the onset, the nucleous and coda. Syllables can be open when ending in vowel (V, CV), closed (VC, CVC), covered with a consonant for an onset (CV, CVC), uncovered with no onset (V, VC), light with a short vowel and no consonant to follow, heavy with a long vowel or a diphthong, or a short vowel with a consonant to follow.

The number of syllable patterns is 23. 3 types of syllables: 1) phonetic are preduced in pronunciation. 2) orphographic is the one into which words are devided in writing. The 1 and the 2 one may or may not go inside (name). 3) morphemic. The morphemic boundary goes inside with the syllabic ones in “lately” but does not in the word “later”.

The syllabic structure has two aspects, which are inseparable from each other: syllable formation and syllable division. The syllable is one or more speech sound forming a single uninterrupted unit, which may be a word or a commonly subdivision of a word. In English a syllable is formed by any vowel alone or in combination with one or more consonants and by a word-final sonorant [m,n,l] immediately by a consonant. Are, it, man – 1 syllable,table, paper – 2 syl.

syllable division - this is a way of working out how to spell most two-syllable words and what happens when adding suffixes. Has some rules determined in English by the free or checked character of vowels: 1) in the combination of 2 vowels the poit of division is between them (tired in the VCV, it’s before the consonant – hero, teacher). 2) free vowels occur in an open-syllable separated by a single consonant from the word-final sonorant (ta-ble, gar-den). 3) in closed syllables VC with short stressed checked vowels the boundary is either after the intellocalic consonant or within it. (let-ter, better, runner). 4) unstressed vowels – long and short monophthongs and diphthongs separated from a stressed vowels by a consonant are in the open syllable (idea) 5) if two vowels are separated by two consonants, the point of division depends if this consonant occurs at the beginning of English vowel (agree, admit). 6) if two vowels are separated by three or more consonants the same rule applies (embrace, extra).

The functions: constrictive – it lies in its ability to be part of a word or a word itself); distinctive – to differentiate words and word-forms; recognitive- to understand the exact meaning.

Peculiarities of the syllable: 1) syllabic boundary is inside the introvocalic consonant preceeded by short vowels (money, Betty) 2) syllabic boundary is before the introvocalic consonant if it’s not preceeded by short vowels (speaker). 3) the sonorants l, m, n are syllabic if they are preceeded by noice consonants in opposition to sonorants (sudden – little). 4) there can’t be more then one vowel within one syllable (VC-type of the syllabic structure). 5) the English diphthongs considering of one vowel phoneme.

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