Syllable, Stress & Accent

Syllable, Stress & Accent

Tutorial:
THE SYLLABLE <<<BACK<<<
CONTENTS<<<<DEFINITIONS<<<<STRESS<<<<EXERCISES<<<<LINKS

IN THIS SECTION: >>> DEFINING THE SYLLABLE
>>> SYLLABLE STRUCTURE
>>> PHONOTACTICS
>>> DIVISION OF SYLLABLES


§1. Defining the syllable
The syllable is a basic unit of speech studied on both the phonetic and phonological levels of analysis. No matter how easy it can be for people and even for children to count the number of syllables in a sequence in their native language, still there are no universally agreed upon phonetic definitions of what a syllable is.
PHONETIC DEFINITION Phonetically 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 that centre (…) there will be greater obstruction to airflow and/or less loud sound” (Roach, 2000: 70). In the monosyllable (one-syllable word) cat /kæt/, the vowel /æ/ is the “centre” at which little obstruction takes place, whereas we have complete obstruction to the airflow for the surrounding plosives /k/ and /t/.
PHONOLOGICAL DEFINITION Laver (1994: 114) defines the phonological syllable as “a complex unit made up of nuclear and marginal elements”. Nuclear elements are the vowels or syllabic segments; marginal elements are the consonants or non-syllabic segments. In the syllable paint /peɪnt/, the diphthong /eɪ/ is the nuclear element, while initial consonant /p/ and the final cluster /nt/ are marginal elements.
PROMINENCE THEORY Attempts have been made to provide physiological, acoustic or auditory explanations and definitions of the syllable. According to the prominence theory, for example, which is based mainly on auditory judgements, the number of syllables in a word is determined by the number of peaks of prominence. In the word entertaining /ˌentəˈteɪnɪŋ/ the peaks of prominence are represented by the vowels /e ə eɪ ɪ/. However, this theory does not help much in discussions of syllable division.
CHEST PULSE THEORY The chest pulse theory discusses the syllable in the context of muscular activities and lung movements in the process of speech. Experiments have shown that the number of chest pulses, accompanied by increase of air pressure can determine the number of syllables produced (Gimson, 1980: 56), thus allowing to associate the number of syllables with the number of chest pulses. This approach, however, cannot account for cases when 2 vowels occur one after the other – for example in words like being /ˈbi:ɪŋ/ or playing /ˈpleɪɪŋ/ the second chest pulse might be almost irrelevant and thus lead erroneously to the conclusion that such English words consist of one syllable only.
SONORITY THEORY,
SONORITY SCALE Another approach is presented by sonority theory according to which the pulses of pulmonic air stream in speech “correspond to peaks in sonority” (Giegerich, 1992: 132). The sonority of a speech sound is discussed as “its relative loudness compared to other sounds” (Giegerich, 1992: 132) and each syllable corresponds to a peak in the flow rate of pulmonic air. Thus nuclear elements, or syllabic segments can be described as intrinsically more sonorous than marginal, or non-syllabic elements.
Speech sounds can be ranked in terms of their intrinsic sonority according to a sonority scale. The sonority scale for English is given below (although in principle it is also valid for other languages). Voiced segments are more sonorous than voiceless ones and sonorants are more sonorous than obstruents; vowels are more sonorous than consonants, open vowels being more sonorous than close ones. The disyllabic word painting /ˈpeɪntɪŋ/ has been plotted onto the sonority scale as an example.

↑ vowels • •
more sonorous approximants
nasals • •
less sonorous fricatives
affricates
↓ plosives • •
p eɪ n t ɪ ŋ
→ linear sequence of phonemes →
As can be seen from the chart, there are two peaks of sonority in the phoneme string /p-eɪ-n-t-ɪ-ŋ/, namely the vowels /eɪ ɪ/. This is to indicate that the number of syllables is 2 as well.
The sonority scale, like all the approaches outlined above, is of little help when it comes to delimiting separate syllables, however.