syllable

syllable
The syllable is a fundamentally important unit both in phonetics and in phonology. It
is a good idea to keep phonetic notions of the syllable separate from phonological
ones. Phonetically we can observe that the flow of speech typically consists of an
alternation between vowel-like states (where the vocal tract is comparatively open and
unobstructed) and consonant-like states where some obstruction to the airflow is
made. Silence and pause are to be regarded as being of consonantal type in this case.
So from the speech production point of view a syllable consists of a movement from a
constricted or silent state to a vowel-like state and then back to constricted or silent.
From the acoustic point of view, this means that the speech signal shows a series of
peaks of energy corresponding to vowel-like states separated by troughs of lower
energy (see sonority).
However, this view of the syllable appears often not to fit the
facts when we look at the phonemic structure of syllables and at speakers’ views
about them. One of the most difficult areas is that of syllabic consonants.
Phonologists are interested in the structure of the syllable, since there appear to be
interesting observations to be made about which phonemes may occur at the
beginning, in the middle and at the end of syllables.
The study of sequences of
phonemes is called
phonotactics,
and it seems that the phonotactic possibilities of a
language are determined by syllabic structure; this means that any sequence of sounds
that a native speaker produces can be broken down into syllables without any
segments being left over. For example, in ‘Their strengths triumphed frequently’, we
find the rather daunting sequences of consonant phonemes ..str and mftfr, but
using what we know of English phonotactics we can split these clusters into one part
that belongs to the end of one syllable and another part that belongs to the beginning
of another. Thus the first one can only be divided .. | str or ..s 3 tr and the second
can only be mft 3 fr. Phonological treatments of
syllable structure usually call the
first part of a syllable the onset, the middle part the peak and the end part the coda; the
combination of peak and coda is called the rhyme.Syllables are claimed to be the most basic unit in speech: every language has
syllables, and babies learn to produce syllables before they can manage to say a word
of their native language. When a person has a speech disorder, their speech will still
display syllabic organisation, and slips of the tongue also show that syllabic regularity
tends to be preserved even in “faulty” speech.

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