syllable (n.) (syll)

A UNIT of pronunciation typically larger than a single sound and smaller than a WORD. A word may be pronounced ‘syllable at a time’, as in ne-ver-the-less, and a good dictionary will indicate where these syllabic divisions occur in writing, thus providing information about how a word may be hyphenated. The notion of syllable, in short, is very real to NATIVE-SPEAKERS, and is often used in a quasi-technical sense in everyday conversation (e.g. Shall I put it in words of one syllable?). Syllabification is the term which refers to the division of a word into syllables; resyllabification refers to a REANALYSIS which alters the location of syllable boundaries. A word containing a single syllable is called a monosyllable; if it contains more than one, the term polysyllable is used (or monosyllabic word/polysyllabic word respectively).

Providing a precise definition of the syllable is not an easy task, and there are several theories in both PHONETICS and PHONOLOGY which have tried to clarify matters. From a phonetic viewpoint, attempts have been made to define the syllables of a LANGUAGE on the basis of the articulatory effort needed in order to produce them. The ‘pulse’ or ‘motor’ theory of syllable production proposed by the psychologist R. H. Stetson (1892–1950) argued that each syllable corresponds to an increase in air pressure, air from the lungs being released as a series of chest pulses. This can often be readily felt and measured, particularly in emphatic speech; but it is also often difficult to detect such a pulse in adjacent syllables, as when two VOWELS co-occur, e.g. going (which is two syllables, but usually said in a single muscular effort). An alternative phonetic approach attempts to define the syllable in auditory terms: the PROMINENCE theory argues that, in a STRING of sounds, some are intrinsically more ‘sonorous’ than others, and that each ‘peak’ of SONORITY corresponds to the centre of a syllable. These peaks are best illustrated by vowels, which have the greater carrying-power. The less sonorous sounds provide ‘valleys’ of prominence, and are best illustrated by the closures and narrowings which produce consonants. This approach gives a useful general guideline, but it does not always indicate clearly where the boundary between adjacent syllables falls, e.g. in busker, the problem of whether to split the word as bus-ker, bu-sker or busk-er is not answerable using arguments based on perceived sonority. The problem remains, even if other acoustic features than sonority (such as pitch or length) are incorporated within the notion of prominence, but has been specifically addressed in some phonological theories (notably METRICAL PHONOLOGY).

Phonetic approaches of this kind attempt to provide a definition of the syllable valid for all languages, and it is possible that more valid definitions in terms of speech production or perception will emerge. Phonological views of the syllable, on the other hand, focus on the ways sounds combine in individual languages to produce typical SEQUENCES. Here, two classes of sounds are usually established: sounds which can occur on their own, or at the centre of a sequence of sounds, and sounds which cannot occur on their own, or which occur at the edges of a sequence of sounds. The former include such sounds as [i], [a], [u], etc., and are generally referred to as VOWELS; the latter include such sounds as [p], [g], [f], , etc., and are generally referred to as CONSONANTS. A consonant–vowel (CV) sequence is a pattern which seems to be found in all languages: because the syllable is not ‘closed’ by another consonant, this type of syllable is often called an open syllable type. A CVC pattern is also very common in English. In such a case, the following terminology is widely used:

the opening segment of a syllable = the onset,

the closing segment of the syllable = the coda,

the central segment of the syllable = the centre or nucleus.

A useful collective term for the opening and closing segments is the MARGINS (or EDGES) of the syllable. In METRICAL PHONOLOGY, the nucleus and coda are viewed as a single constituent of syllable structure, called the rhyme (or rime), and syllables are distinguished phonologically in terms of their WEIGHT.

Using such methods, syllables can be defined in terms of the way the sound SEGMENTS of a language function. In this way, for instance, one can identify the various CLUSTERS of segments which may occur at syllable margins, such as CV (say), CCV (play), CCCV (stray), etc. Exceptional syllables can also be identified, such as those where certain consonants occur alone to form the syllable – the NASALS and LATERALS in words such as button  and bottle , where [‘] indicates that the final consonant is a syllabic consonant.

The notion of syllable is widely used elsewhere in phonology, e.g. in relation to PROSODY and cross-linguistic studies of RHYTHM. In the DISTINCTIVE FEATURE theory of phonology proposed by Chomsky and Halle, syllabic is used to replace the earlier term ‘vocalic’, referring to all segments constituting a syllabic nucleus. Vowels, liquids and nasals would be [+syllabic] ([+syll]); all other segments would be [−syll]. In later approaches to phonology, the notion of syllable has become increasingly important, especially in models of NON-LINEAR PHONOLOGY. Here, syllabification (and resyllabification) are interpreted in relation to questions of REPRESENTATION – how and at what point syllable structure is assigned to strings in a DERIVATION, and which phonological rules are involved in syllabification. Several models recognize a prosodic HIERARCHY in which the syllable plays a role: in PROSODIC MORPHOLOGY, for example, it is a level above the MORA and below the FOOT.