Syllable Division

It’s one thing to count the number of syllables in the word and quite another to decide, where the boundaries between syllables should go. It’s quite clear that sounds of language can be grouped according to certain rules. The part of phonetics that deals with this problem is called phonotactics. In syllable division the following rules are important:

• In the words of (C)V – CV type the syllable division is naturally before the intervocalic consonant if the first vowel is a long one or a diphthong (teacher [ti:| ʧə], army [ɑː|mi]). If the vowel is a short monophthong in a stressed position, it must be checked. Such a vowel may occur only in a closed syllable. It means that in this syllabic structure the syllabic division can go either within the consonant or after it. Most phoneticians consider the syllable division in those words to go within the intervocalic consonant: [letə] ([let|tə]).

• Another problematic case of syllable division is connected with the words “agree”, “abrupt”, “admire”. The question is: where should the syllable boundary go, up to the first vowel or between the consonant? The phonological criteria is applied in these cases. In the words “agree” and “abrupt” the syllable boundary after the first vowel, because such initial clasters gr, br are possible in English words (“grow”). In “admire” the boundary goes after “d” because there are no English words which begin with dm.

• There are cases when the suggested criteria may fail. That’s the case with the word “extra”. There are 3 possible variants of division: [ek | s | t | ra]. All of them are possible because initial cluster “str” exist in English. As David Crystal points out there is no obvious way to solve this problem, so we should rely on the speaker’s intuition.

Functions of the syllable

1. Constitutive function. It demonstrate the ability of the syllable to form larger units such as words, morphemes and sentences.

2. Distinctive function. It shows that a syllable is capable of differentiating words.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH WORD

Structurally, the English word is made up of an optional prefix, obligatory base form or root and one or more suffixes in that rigid syntagmatic order. The basic formula for this is (p) b (f ) where p is ‘prefix’, b is ‘base form’ and f is ‘postfix’. But since we have not been adopting postfix in our discussion, we can as well say the structure is: (p) b (s) with ‘s’ meaning ‘suffix’. The brackets indicate that their contents are optional. The arrow indicates the rigid order or sequence of the elements when they occur together in a word. Moreover, in English, there is usually, not always, one ‘p’ element, usually one b elements or one or more ‘s’ elements. It is only in a compound structure that there are more than one ‘b’ elements. This means that a word may have two prefixes (as in ‘pre + in+dependence’) and three suffixes. The numbering indicates the primacy of the affixes. As earlier adumbrated, the base is usually one except in compound structures where the second base will be considered as additional root. The preceding discussion has demonstrated that that word forms in English exhibit different structural patterns. The summary is that a word is a morpheme or combination of morphemes. It can be simple, complex or compound. The root always constitutes the base upon which affixes are added to form complex words or forms. Combining root morphemes gives us compound words. Spelling and pronunciation are closely related and should be studied together. This is especially true of English vowel sounds and their representation in writing. The number of English vowel sounds represented by vowel letters and their combinations with other vowels and with certain consonants is larger than the number of vowel letters, which means that one and the same vowel letter or letter combination represents more than one sound. English also has several spelling variants for each vowel sound, which means that the same vowel sound is represented by different letters and letter combinations in writing. The most practical approach is to learn typical spelling patterns for vowel sounds. The other spelling variants may be present only in a couple of words or in words that are not used very often. The neutral sound is one of the most difficult vowel sounds in terms of pronunciation and spelling. In everyday speech, the unstressed short vowels are often pronounced as the neutral sound, and in some cases the neutral sound is dropped. In other cases, the neutral sound may appear in the syllable between two consonants where there is no vowel in spelling, for example, table, apple, riddle, prism. This stresses the necessity to study the pronunciation of English words together with their spelling.

Consonants are easier than vowels in terms of spelling. A consonant sound is often represented by the same consonant letter in writing: bed [bed], pin [pin], kind [kaind], take [teik], mark [ma:rk], false [fo:ls], first, joke, government, skeleton, distribute, tremble, inventive, horrible, wonderful. But there are several consonant sounds that are represented by different consonant letters or letter combinations in writing, for example, [k], [s], [g], [j], [f], [sh]. There are also consonant letters and letter combinations that have several variants of pronunciation, for example, c, ch, g, gh, x, xh. This often presents some difficulty for language learners.