The syllabic structure of English Group: 323

The syllabic structure of English

Group:323

Ruziyeva Mohinur

2. Theories of syllable formation and syllable division

1. The definition of a syllable

3. The syllabic structure of English.

Plan:

In the speech continuum sounds are not pronounced separately "by themselves". The minimal pronounciation (articulatory) unit is the syllable which may consist of sound or a group of sounds. The notion of the syllable is one of the fundamental notions of phonetics.

The problem of the syllable in modern phonetics is the problem of syllable formation, syllable division and the phonological status of the syllable. Phoneticians are not always in agreement in their definition of the syllable. This is due to the fact that the syllable may be defined in different ways-functionally, physioligically, acoustically.

One of the physiological theories is the expiratory, or chest pulse, theory. It defines the syllable as a sound or a group of sounds that are pronounced in one chest pulse, accompanied by increases in air pressure. There are as many syllables in a word as there are chest pulses (expirations) made during the utterance of the word. Each vowel sound is pronounced with increased expiration.

Another theory of the syllable is the relative sonority theory, or the prominence theory, created by the Danish phonetician Otto Jespersen. This theory is based mainly on auditory judgments on the prominence of speech sounds, e.g. their sonority, or audibility. Pronounced with uniform force, length and pitch, speech sounds differ in prominence (sonority). The most sonorous are vowels, less sonorous are sonants and the least sonorous are noise consonants

The syllabic structure of English has certain peculiarities that distinguish it from other languages. They are as follows: 1. Syllabic sound in English are not only vowels, but also sonants /l, n, m/, when they are preceded by a noise consonant. E.g. /teIbl, gɑ:dn, bi:tn, fIlm, prIzm, sdnlI/ The sonants /w, r, j/ are never syllabic. 2. As to the type of sounds constituting the syllable (vowel-V, consonant-C) there exist 23 syllable structures in the English language.

Depending on the position of the vowel, which is the peak of the syllable, and that of the consonants, which form the margins of the syllable, we distinguish the following types of syllables: Open syllables, when there is no consonant after the vocalic peaks, (CV) e.g. /fa:/ far, /taI/ tie, /si:/ sea. Closed syllables, when the vocalic peak is followed by a consonant, (VC) e.g. /a:t/ art, /sIt/ sit, /bIl/ bill. Covered syllables, (CV(c)), when the peak is preceded by a consonant, e.g. /lɔŋ/, /ɔ:/ shore. Uncovered syllables, (v(c)), when there is no consonant before the peak, e.g. /æpt/ apt, /i:t/ eat, /In/ in.

3. Consonant clusters are very characteristics of the syllable structure of

3. Consonant clusters are very characteristics of the syllable structure of

English, 19 structures out of 23 have consonant clusters.

The largest possible initial number of consonants in a cluster is 3. Final

clusters contain up to 4 (5 are very rare). Consonant clusters present particular

interest in the studies of the syllable because it is due to consonants that the

structure of the syllable varies.

music

MUSIC

4. English checked vowels (i.e. all historically short vowels under stress)

occur only in a closed syllable. They cannot occur at the end of a syllable

as there is no tailing off in articulatory tension. Checked vowels are

always followed by initially strong consonants.

E.g. bed /bed/, Sunday /sn-dI/, hot /hɔt/, put /put/.

Thank you for your attention!