Lecture 5. Syllabification. Syllabic structure of English words.

It’s an open secret that any speech is a continuum. But this continuum is divided into smaller units. The sounds usually grouped into these units. These units got the name – a syllable.

Before speaking about English syllables let’s consider some general issues of a syllable.

I. Syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit.

Any syllable may be defined as one or more speech sounds forming one uninterrupted unit of an utterance and may coincide with the word itself (man, I) or with a part of it (mo in the morning, ti in the word pretty).

As the smallest pronounceable of a language, a syllable forms the language units of greater magnitude (morphemes, words and phrases). Any of the mentioned above units possesses its own syllabic structure and so has two aspects. Syllable formation and syllable division.

The syllable has always been a subject of disputes and ground for experiments in the area of phonetic knowledge. A syllable as phonetic unit, represents a complicated phenomenon and as well as the phoneme can be investigated on the acoustic, articulatory, auditory and functional levels. The complex nature of a sound has resulted in a plenty of theories connected with studying of such phenomenon as a syllable. Let us consider the basic of them.

The first theory is based on the articulatory aspect. It was put forward by R. H. Stetson and has the name expiratory theory or the theory of an exhalation. It is based on the idea that our speech is based on the process of expiration and each syllable should correspond with a single expiration. Thus, the amount of syllables the utterance depends on the amount of expirations. This theory has received serious criticism from Soviet and foreign phoneticians. Thus for example, G. P. Torsuev writes, that in a phrase some words, and, consequently syllables can be pronounced with one exhalation. Only this statement gives us the ground to believe that the above described theory is not valid enough.

Another theory which should be mentioned in connection with the phenomenon discussed i.e. the syllable, was developed by O. Jesperson and carries the name sonority theory and is based on the concept of sonority. Jesperson believed, that any sound of language has the certain degree of sonority, a certain acoustic property of a sound that determines its perceptibility. Thus in a language there exist more sonorous sounds and less sonorous sounds. According to this it is possible to establish a hierarchy of sounds according to their degree of sonority. This ranking of speech sounds starts with open vowels which have the highest degree of sonority, goes through close vowels, sonorants, voiced fricatives, continues through voiced plosives, voiceless fricatives and finishes with the least sonorous sounds - voiceless plosives, which have the lowest degree of sonority. In any combination the most sonorous sound forms a syllabic centre, and the least sonorous – a marginal segment. Thus, for example, in a word plant, the sequence passes through the least sonorous [p], then through [l] we approach the most advanced stage of sonority - sound [a:]. The chain proceeds and slopes down through [n], having a smaller degree of sonority and comes to an end with [t], the second minimum.

		.
P	l	A	n	T

This theory seems to be very general and to reflect the idea of a syllable in many languages. Still in many languages there are syllable which contradict it.

Thus, according to this theory, in English words such as [stops] should be 3 syllables, instead of its actual one. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Vasil'ev points out that the main draw back of a theory is that it fails to explain the real mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division. Besides, the aspect of sonority itself on which the theory is based, is not very clearly defined, which also makes the theory less scientific.

Among the representatives of the Soviet school the most significant theory belongs to L. V. Scherba. This theory got the name – the theory of muscular tension. The key point of he theory is that in the majority of languages in the centre of a syllable there is a syllabic phoneme, frequently a vowel. Phonemes previous to a syllable or following it are called marginal. The Energy, that is the tension of articulation, increases within the range of prevocalic consonants and decreases on postvocalic consonants. It gives the reasons to claim that the syllable is the articulatory arc of articulatory or muscular tension.

This idea was modified by Васильев, who added the acoustic data which prove that three acoustic properties (pitch, intensity and duration vary from the minimal on prevocalic consonants to the maximum on the peak and decrease on post vocalic). This once again proves the theory worked out by Scherba.

Among other theories there is one more that deserves our attention. This is the theory of the Soviet linguist and physiologist Zhinkin. He worked with a syllable on perceptive level. He united two aspects – perception (recognition) and reproduction. His theory carries the name « the theory of loudness ». According to his theory and the experiments that he carried out, the syllable is the arc of loudness that correlates with the arc of articulatory effort.

From everything mentioned above it follows, that a syllable is by no means a simple phenomenon. No phonetician has succeeded in giving an exhaustive and adequate explanation of what a syllable is. Anyway it is possible to claim that there are two main points of view.

• some linguists consider the syllable as an articulatory unit without any reference to its functional aspects;

• others (and it is necessary to mention that this is the majority) believe that the syllable is the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic functions.

Speaking about functional aspects of the thing, it seems to be wise to consider a language in particular without any generalization. As A.C. Gimson points out, it may be found appropriate to divide a similar sounds sequence differently in different languages.

Regarding the syllable from the functional point of view, modern linguists tend out to single out its following features:

• it is a chain of phonemes of various length

• it is based on the contrast of its elements (usually v-c type)

• the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonant is optional; there are no language sin which the vowels are not the centres of the syllable, however there are language sin which this function is performed by a consonant