The syllabic structure of English

Syllable division is very important too in distinguishing words & utterances:

/ naitreit / “nitrate” - / naitreit / “night-rate”

/ neim/ “a name” - / neim / “an aim”

/ ai skri:m / “I scream” - / aiskri:m / “ice-cream”

The identificatory function of the syllable is conditioned by the hearer’s perception of syllables as entire phonetic units with their concrete allophones & syllabic boundaries.

• The identificatory function of the syllable is conditioned by the hearer’s perception of syllables as entire phonetic units with their concrete allophones & syllabic boundaries.
• The listener identifies two syllables in “plum pie” - сливовый пирог & “plump eye” – глаза навыкате bulging with the corresponding boundaries before / p / & after / p /, bec. in the first example / p / is unaspirated & / m / is shorter on account of the following fortis / p /.

Syllable is the minimal grouping of vowels and consonants necessary for articulation (phonetic unit) and for storing strings of phonemes in the mental representation (phonological unit). The syllable is a unit posited at both the phonetic and the phonological levels of analysis.

The notion of a phonetic unit is difficult to define. Most scholars agree that a child can usually count on his/her fingers the number of syllables in a sequence, but no phonetician has succeeded so far in giving an exhaustive and adequate description of what syllable is. There have been attempts to describe it as a minimal articulatory unit in terms of "chest-pulse" theory (R.H. Stetson), sonority theory (O. Jespersen), as an arc of muscular tension (L.V Scherba) or, perceptually, an arc of loudness (N.I. Zhinkin). Syllable is also a minimal prosodic unit in which prosodic features of pitch, length and loudness may be realized.

Syllable as a phonological unit maybe defined as a minimal pattern of phoneme combination with a vowel as nucleus, preceded and followed by a consonant unit or permitted consonant combination. It can also be defined as "a complex unit, made up of nuclear and marginal elements" (Layer 1995), with vowels acting as nuclear, syllabic, elements and conso­nants as marginal, or non-syllabic ones.