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

Parts of orthographic and orthoepic syllables do not always coincide.
E.g. Word Phonetic syllables Orthographic syllables
table /'tei-bl/ ta-ble
laden /'lei-dn/ la-den
programme /'prou-græm/ pro-gramme
poet /'pou-it/ po-et
It is very important to observe correct syllable division when neces­sity arises to divide a word in writing. Division of words into sylla­bles in writing (syllabographs) is based on morphological principles. The morphological principle of word division in orthography demands that the part of a word, which is separated, should be either a prefix, or a suffix, or a root (morphograph): un-divided, utter-ance, pun-ish, be-fore, ]imit-ed, smil-ing.
However, if there are two or three consonants before -ing, these consonants may be separated in writing, e.g. gras-ping, puz-zling.
The suffix -ed can be separated in writing only if it is preceded by t, d,
e.g. divid-ed, decid-ed
Polygraphs are not separated in writing,
e.g. dial, ancient, patience, thoroughly.
Two or more consonants before a suffix that begins with a vowel may be separated in writing,
e.g. gras-ping, trick-ling, big-ger.
No orthography is capable of representing exactly the pronunciation of the language. But a precise representa­tion of pronunciation is indispensable for various purposes (learning the pronunciation of unfamiliar words of one's moth­er tongue, in linguistic work and in learning foreign lan­guages).


Chapter II. The syllabic structure of English as the object of phonotactic investigations.
2.1. The syllabic structure of English words and types of syllables
The structure of the English word and its components have always been the object of phonetic investigations of the last several decades. Being one of the components of the phonetic structure of the word the syllable usually combines the properties of both segmental and suprasegmental units of the language[36.98].
We stated that existing consonant combinations or clusters in English are usually found in the beginning or end of words which coincide with syllable onsets and codas and this fact causes us to speak about the features of the syllable, its onsets and codas.
A syllable is a rhythmic unit of speech and comprises one or more segments which are considered to be the building blocks for syllables. A syllable is a speech unit higher than a sound, because sounds are not pronounced separately but are usually formed into syllables, which, in their turn, are joined into words, phrases and sentences. A syllable is the minimal unit of sounding speech.
Phonotactics deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes and it defines possible syllable structures, consonant clusters and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints [ 32.114-115].
It is known that in the speech continuum sounds are not pronounced separately. The final and initial phases of articulation of two neighbouring sounds interpenetrate. So it is practically impossible to draw articulatory and consequently, acoustic boundaries between them. Sounds are the smallest phonetic units resulting from the linguistic analysis as representations of phonemes.
The problem of the syllable in modern phonetics is at the same time the problem of syllable formation, syllable division and the phonological status of the components of the syllable.
According to the oldest conception, expressed by ancient Greek scholars, the syllable consists of a vowel, surrounded by consonants. If the function of the vowel in the syllable is to serve as its nucleus or peak, then the function of the consonants is to be the margins of the syllable[35.312].
Thus we may define that a syllable is a unit of sound composed of a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel) and the consonants that cluster around this central peak and these clusters consist of combinations of allowable segments and typical sound sequences. The rules of phonotactics operate around the sonority features, stipulating that the nucleus has maximal sonority and that sonority decreases as we move away from the nucleus .
The segmentation of the speech continuum into discrete sounds and the allocation of the latter to phonemic categories is the result of linguistic analysis and not of the immediate auditory impression of linguistically untrained language users. So long as the speech they hear is within what they feel to be the phonetic norm, they do not even notice separate speech sounds. One of the reasons for this is that speech sounds are not "said by themselves" in the normal process of using language as a medium of oral in­tercommunication. This, in its turn, is due to the fact that speech sounds are normally part of a larger and hierarchi­cally higher phonetic unit known as the syllable, which is an integral constituent part of a still higher language unit, the word.
Syllables consisting of two or more speech sounds are not just mechanical groupings of segmental phonemes. The latter are organized into syllables through being joined together in them by specific articulatory means, while syl­lables themselves are joined together by specific means in words and wordforms and, through the latter, in phrases and sentences[33.90-92].
Since the syllable structure of words pronounced in isolation may be different from the syllabic structure of the same words in phrases and sentences, it is not sufficient to speak of the syllabic struc­ture of only the words and wordforms of a language; it is necessary to speak also of the syllabic structure of phrases and sentences in it, i.e. of the syllabic structure of the langu­age itself.
So as a working definition we can give the following formulation:
A syllable is a unit of sound composed of a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel), and the consonants that cluster around this central peak.Syllable structure, which is the combination of allowable segments and typical sound sequences, is language specific.
In linguistic literature we usually find three functions of the syllable.