Ўзбекистон Республикаси Олий ва ўрта махсус таълим вазирлиги Фарғона давлат университети Чет тиллар факультети

Light and heavy syllables. We must distinguish here between light and heavy syllables. This distinction will be important in our discussion of stress placement. A syllable is light if its rhyme consists of a lax/short vowel without a coda. A syllable is heavy if its rhyme contains (1) a coda, or (2) a tense/long vowel or a diphthong[18.356].
The linguistic importance of syllable division in different languages is in finding typology of syllables and syllabic structure of meaningful units of a language, that is morphemes and words. It is the syllable division that determines the syllabic structure of the language, its syllabic typology.
Syllabic structure of a language like its phonemic structure is patterned, which means that the sounds of language can be grouped into syllables according to certain rules. The part of phonetics that deals with this aspect of a language is called phonotactics. Phonotactic possibilities of a language determine the rules of syllable division.
Each syllable contains exactly one vowel. This vowel may be preceded or followed bу one or more consonants. The vowel itself may be a short vowel, a long vowel or a diphthong; or if it is the weak vowel [ə], it may be combined with a nasal [n], [m]or a liquid [l] to give a syllabic consonant.
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 on syllabification.
The following rules of phonetic (spoken) syllable division are adopted:

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

displace [,dis 'pleis] become [bi 'к٨m] countless ['kaunt ləs] hardware ['ha:d weə] CVC-CSVC, CV-CVS, CVSC-SVC, CVC-SV.

2. 
   Consonants are syllabified with whichever of the two adjacent vowels is more strongly stressed, e.g. farmer ['fa:m ə], agenda [ə 'ʤendə]. It they are both unstressed, it goes with the leftward one: e.g. cinema ['sin əmə], delicious [di 'liʃəs], deliberate [di'lib ər ət].
   
3. 
   The English diphthongs are 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 [ʧ], [ʤ] cannot be split: catching ['kæʧiŋ]
   

Sometimes a syllable consists phonetically only of a consonant or consonants. If so, a consonant (or one of them) is nasal (usually [n]) or a liquid (usually [1] or [r] in AmE), for instance, in the usual pronunciation of suddenly ['s٨d n li]. Such a consonant is a syllabic consonant. The IPA provides a special diacritic [.] to show syllabicity, thus syllabic consonants may be shown [ṇ] [ḷ].
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 ['wз:k.ə] CVC-V = two phonetic syllables and one syllabograph
A most general rule claims that division of words into syllables in writing is passed on the morphological principle which 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 ʧə]. Compound words can 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 -ng, 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 > -ed, -er, -1с 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 ].
  

Now we shall consider three very important functions of the syllable.
The first function is known to be the constitutive function of the syllable. It lies in its ability to be a part of a word or a word itself. The syllable forms language units of greater magnitude, that is words, morphemes and utterances. In this respect two things should be emphasized. First, the syllable is the unit within which the relations between the distinctive features of the phonemes and their acoustic correlates are revealed. Second, within a syllable (or a sequence of syllables) prosodic characteristics of speech are realized, which form the stress-pattern of a word and the rhythmic and intonation struc tures of an utterance. In sum, the syllable is a specific minimal structure of both segmental and suprasegmental features[19.94-95].
The other function of the syllable is its distinctive function. In this respect the syllable is characterized by its ability to differen tiate words and word-forms. To illustrate this a set of minimal pairs should be found so that qualitative and/or quantitative pe culiarities of certain allophones should indicate the beginning or the end of the syllable.
So far only one minimal pair has been found in English to illustrate the word dis tinctive function in the syllable, that is ['nai-treit] nitrate – ['nait-reit] night-rate. The distinction here lies in:

1. 
   the degree of aspiration of [t] is greater in the first member of the opposition than in the second;
   
2. 
   allophonic difference of [r]: in the first member of the opposition it is slightly devoiced under the influence of the initial [t];
   
3. 
   the length of the diphthong [ai]: in the second member of the opposition it is shorter because the syllable is closed by a voiceless plosive [t].
   

The third function of the syllable is the identificatory function (ідентифікативна функція): the listener can understand the exact meaning of the utterance only when the correct syllabic boundary is perceived:

an aim —	a name
mice kill —	my skill
an ice house —	a nice house
peace talks —	Pea stalks
plate rack —	play track

Sometimes the difference in syllabic division might be the basic ground for differ entiation sentences in such minimal pairs as:
I saw her eyes. — I saw her rise.
I saw the meat. — I saw them eat.