Syllabic Structure of English Words

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1041.

Plan

SYLLABIC AND ACCENTUAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS

Lecture 4

Practical task

1. Make a glossary of the main notions and give their definitions.

2. Fill in the following table featuring the articulatory features of English RP vowels:

1. Syllabic structure of English words.

2. Accentual structure of English words.

Speech is a continuum. However, it can be broken into minimal pronounceable

units into which sounds show a tendency to cluster or group themselves. These smallest

phonetic groups are generally given the name of syllables.The syllable is one or more

speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance which may be a commonly recognized subdivision of a word or the whole of a word [Wells 2000: 758]. Being the smallest pronounceable units, the syllables form language units of greater magnitude, that is morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Consequently we might say that a meaningful language unit has two aspects: syllable formation and syllable division which form a dialectical unity.

The syllable is a fairly complicated phenomenon and like the phoneme it can be

studied on four levels: acoustic, articulatory, auditory and functional, which means that

the syllable can be approached from different points of view.

The theory most often referred to is the theory of syllable put forward by O. Jespersen. It is generally called the sonoritytheory / the prominence theory (теорія відносної сонорності) and is based on the concept of sonority. The creator of this theory, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, has proved that the least sonorous sounds which have the least carrying power, are those for which the mouth is closed (voiceless oral stops), while the most sonorous sounds are those for which the mouth is wide open (low vowels). All other sounds are ranked in between these two extreme points of the sonority scale: (from the highest degree to the lowest):

1. Low vowels (a:, ɔ..).

2. High vowels (i:, i....)

3. Semivowels (j, w)

4. Liquids (1, r)

5. Nasals (m, n, ŋ)

6. Fricatives (voiced) (v, z, ð)

7. Fricatives (voiceless) (f, θ, s)

8. Oral stops (voiced) (b, d, g)

9. Oral stops (voiceless) (p, t, k).

By this theory the syllable is treated as the combination of a more sonorous sound

with a less sonorous one. All the sounds with the greatest degree of sonority (vowels and sonorants) are at the peak of the syllable, by which the syllable may be marked as a unit, because the rest of the sounds surrounding the peak cling to it.

According to V.A. Vassilyev, the most serious drawback of this theory is that it

fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division [1970].

Besides, the concept of sonority with which the theory operates is not very clearly defined, which makes it still less consistent.

Further experimental work aimed at the description of the syllable as a phonetic

phenomenon resulted in a lot of other theories, such as F. de Saussure's theory, the theory of the Rumanian linguist A. Rosetti, and the theory of the Czech linguist B. Hala.

The existence of such a variety of approaches to the problem of the syllable means that it is not an easy matter to describe it. That is why the theories referred to above are unable to explain more than a restricted aspect of the phenomenon.

Academician L.V. Shcherba [1963] put forward the theory of muscular tension

(теорія м'язового напруження). It was put forward by the French linguist Michaelle

Grammont and supported and further developed by the Russian linguist Lev V. Scherba.

Academician Lev Volodymyrovych Scherba explained syllable formation by muscular tension impulses and three types of consonants. In speaking, muscular tension impulses follow one another. Each impulse has its strongest point – the peak of prominence – and its weakest prominence – the valley of prominence. Valleys of prominence correspond to points of syllabic division. The end of one syllable and the beginning of the next one can be ascertained by determining the type of consonants which take part in forming the syllables.

Consonants may be pronounced:

1. initially strong – the beginning of a consonant may be more energetic, while the end may be weaker;

2. finally strong – the beginning of the consonant may be weak, and its end more

energetic;

3. and geminate or double – both the beginning and the end are energetic with a

weakening of muscular tension in the middle, acoustically, they give the impression of two consonants.

The more energetic part of a consonant is attached to a vowel, so that initially strong C occurs at the end of a close syllable, while finally strong C occurs at the beginning of a syllable, his theory again does not give a complete explanation of the syllable division mechanism.

It is worth noticing that the theory has been modified by V.A. Vassilyev [1970]. The point is that the syllable like any other pronounceable unit can be characterized by three physical parameters: pitch, intensity and length. Within the range of the syllable these parameters vary from minimum on the prevocalic consonants to maximum on the centre of the syllable, then there is another decrease within the postvocalic consonants. So the conclusion follows: if we take into consideration the tension of articulation and the abovementioned acoustic data on the speech production level the syllable can be treated as an arc of articulatory effort, for example:

There exist two points of view on the syllable:

1. Some linguists consider the syllable to be a purely articulatory unit which lacks

any functional value. This point of view is defended on the grounds that the boundaries of the syllable do not always coincide with those of the morphemes.

2. However the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function.

The definition of the syllable from the functional point of view existing in modern

linguistics tends to single out the following features of the syllable:

a) a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;

b) a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents (which is

usually of vowel-consonant type);

c) the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is optional; there

are no languages in which vowels are not used as syllable nuclei, however, there are languages in which this function is performed by consonants;

d) the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows the rules which

are specific enough for a particular language.

1) syllable formation(складоутворення) 2) syllable division/separation(складоподіл).

Articulatorily,the syllable is the minimal articulatory unit of the utterance.

Auditorily,the syllable is the smallest unit of perception: the listener identifies the whole of the syllable and after that the sounds which it contains.

Phonologicallyit is a structural unit which consists of a sequence of one or some

phonemes of a language in numbers and arrangements permitted by the given language.

Syllable formationin English is based on the phonological opposition vowel – consonant.

In English the syllable is formed:

1. by any vowel alone or in combination with one or more consonants – not more

than 3 preceding and not more than 4 following it, e.g. are [a:], we [wi:], it [it], sixths

[siksθs].

2. by a word final sonorants [n], [1], [m] immediately preceded by a consonant: e.g. rhythm ['rI m], garden ['ga: n].

The English sonorants [w], [j] are never syllabic as they are always syllable-initial.

Thus vowels and sonorants are syllable-forming elements and every word, phrase or sentence has as many syllables as it has syllabic elements.

Every English syllable has a center or peak –a vowel or a sonorant. The peak may

be preceded by one or more non-syllabic elements which constitute the onsetof the syllable, and it may be followed by one or more non-syllabic elements which constitute the coda, e.g. cat [kæt], tree [tri:], ice [ais]

Every language has its own common patterns in which the phonemes are arranged

to form syllables.

According to the placement of vowels and consonants the following types of syllables are distinguished: