Function of the syllable

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 455.

Constitutive Function. Syllables constitute words, phrases and sentences through the combi­nation of their prosodic features: loudness — stress, pitch — tone, dura­tion — length and tempo. Syllables may be stressed, unstressed, high, mid, low, rising, falling, long, short. All these prosodic features constitute the stress pattern of words, tonal and rhythmic structure of an utter­ance, help to perform distinctive variations on the syllabic level. Distinctive and Differentiatory Function. If we compare the words: lightening освещение and lightning молния, we may observe that their syllabicity is the only minimal, distinc­tive feature: /'laitnirj vs. 'laitnirj/. It is an example of the word-distinctive function of the syllable. There are rather many combinations in English distinguished from each other by means of the difference in the place of the syllabic boundary: a name — an aim, ice cream — / scream: /a 'neim/ — /an 'eim/, /'ais'kiim/ — /ai 'skitm/. The distinctive, differentiatory function of the syllabic boundary makes it possible to introduce the term "juncture". Close juncture or conjunc­ture occurs between sounds within one syllable, e.g. a name, I scream: in the first example the close juncture is between /n/ and /ei/, in the se­cond — between /s/ and /k/. Open juncture, disjuncture or internal open juncture occurs between two syllables. If we mark open juncture with /+/ then in our examples it will occur between a +name, I + scream. Ameri­can scientists H. A. Gleason, L. S. Harris and K. Pike consider the open juncture a separate segmental phoneme. They include /+/ into the inven­tory of phonemes as a separate differentiatory unit. Identificatory Function. This function is conditioned by the pronunciation of the speaker. The listener can understand the exact meaning of the utterance only if he perceives the correct syllabic boundary — "syllabodisjuncture", e.g. my train мой поезд— might rain возможен дождь. The existence of such pairs demands special attention to teaching not only the correct pronunciation of sounds but also the observation of the correct place for syllabodisjuncture.