10. The syllable as a phonetic and phonological unit. Syllabic structure of English words. Phonotactic rules of English and Russian: comparison and contrast.

A syllable can be defined as the minimal grouping of vowels and consonants necessary for articulation and for storing strings of phonemes in the mental representation

On the one hand, syllable is a phonetic unit. On the other hand it is a phonological unit. Groups of consonant and vowel sounds in the flow of speech are the phonetic form of the syllable, whereas groups of the corresponding phonemes stored in the memory is its phonological form.

Syllable is made up of nuclear and marginal element, with vowels acting as nuclear, syllabic elements and consonants as marginal or non-syllabic ones. Vowels are nuclear, as they are necessary components of any syllable in any language. In its full form a syllable can consist of three elements: the onset, the nucleus and the coda. The nuclear and the coda constitute the rhyme.

If a syllable contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by a consonant, it is called long or heavy. Such syllables attract stress. The syllables with just a short vowel without a covering consonant are called short or light. They are unstressed

e.g. better [bet-ə]: [bet] – long syllable, [ə] – short syllable.

Universal tendencies in syllabification:

- Overall tendency towards open syllables (CV)

- Sound sequences are syllabified according to a sonority scale from the most sonorous to the least sonorous sounds: low vowels – high vowels – approximants – nasals – lenis fricatives – fortis fricatives - lenis stops – fotis stops e.g. blink [blıηk], twins [twınz].

- According to the principle of Maximum Onset more consonant are clustered in the onset than in the coda E.g. approve [ə-pru:v], not [əp-ru:v].

Language-specific phonotactic rules: English vs Russia

1. The maximal number of consonants in an English onset is three, as in splash,

whereas in Russian a syllable onset may have four: всплакнуть. In the coda the number is reversed: the maximal number for the Russian language is three, while an English coda composed of root + affixes may have as many as four consonants.

2. The dominance of an open syllable in Russian (CV), and a closed syllable in English (CVC).

3. In English approximants [1], [m], [n], [r] may become syllabic after a consonant, which can be explained by the sonority rule: rhyth-m.

4. In Russian there is a close connection between the onset consonants and the following vowels (CV-contact), which affects the quality of vowels,

e.g. мило[м’ила] – мыло [мыла]

In English, like in all Germanic languages, there is a close contact between the vowel and the coda consonants (VC-contact), which affects the length of vowels,

e.g. code – coat: the diphthong [ou] in “code” will be longer than in “coat”.

Positional length of vowels is present in all English dialects but it is particularly important for General American and Scottish Standard English, which do not distinguish historically long and short vowels.