The nature of the syllable

When we looked at the nature of vowels and consonants it was shown that one could decide whether a particular sound was a vowel or a consonant on phonetic grounds (in relation to how much they obstructed the airflow) or on phonological grounds (vowels and consonants having different distributions). We find a similar situation with the syllable, in that it may be defined both phonetically and phonologically. Phonetically (i.e. in relation to the way we produce them and the way they sound), syllables are usually described as consisting of a centre which has little or no obstruction to airflow and which sounds comparatively loud; before and after this centre (i.e. at the beginning and end of the syllable), there will be greater obstruction to airflow and/or less loud sound. We will now look at some examples:

i) What we will call a minimum syllable is a single vowel in isolation (e.g. the words 'are' ɑ:, 'or' ɔ:, 'err' з:). These are preceded and followed by silence. Isolated sounds such as m, which we sometimes produce to indicate agreement, or ʃ, to ask for silence, must also be regarded as syllables.

ii) Some syllables have an onset - that is, instead of silence, they have one or more consonants preceding the centre of the syllable:

'bar'    ba:     'key'    ki:     'more'    mɔ:  

iii) Syllables may have no onset but have a coda - that is, they end with one or more consonants:

'am' æm    'ought' ɔ:t    'ease' i:z

iv) Some syllables have both onset and coda:

'ran' ræn   'sat' sæt   'fill' fɪl

This is one way of looking at syllables. Looking at them from the phonological point of view is quite different. What this involves is looking at the possible combinations of English phonemes; the study of the possible phoneme combinations of a language is called phonotactics. It is simplest to start by looking at what can occur in initial position - in other words, what can occur at the beginning of the first word when we begin to speak after a pause. We find that the word can begin with a vowel, or with one, two or three consonants. No word begins with more than three consonants. In the same way, we can look at how a word ends when it is the last word spoken before a pause; it can end with a vowel, or with one, two, three or (in a small number of cases) four consonants. No current word ends with more than four consonants.