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A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the
rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular rec ...
of a language, its prosody, its
poetic metre In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of ...
and its stress patterns. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ''ignite'' is made of two syllables: ''ig'' and ''nite''.
Syllabic writing In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optio ...
began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing". A word that consists of a single syllable (like English ''dog'') is called a monosyllable (and is said to be ''monosyllabic''). Similar terms include disyllable (and ''disyllabic''; also ''bisyllable'' and ''bisyllabic'') for a word of two syllables; trisyllable (and ''trisyllabic'') for a word of three syllables; and polysyllable (and ''polysyllabic''), which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one syllable.


Etymology

''Syllable'' is an
Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to: *Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066 *Anglo-Norman language **Anglo-Norman literature *Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...
variation of Old French ''sillabe'', from Latin ''syllaba'', from Koine Greek ''syllabḗ'' (). means "the taken together", referring to letters that are taken together to make a single sound. is a verbal noun from the verb ''syllambánō'', a compound of the preposition ''sýn'' "with" and the verb ''lambánō'' "take". The noun uses the root , which appears in the
aorist Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the I ...
tense; the
present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present t ...
stem is formed by adding a nasal infix ' before the ''b'' and a suffix ''-an'' at the end.


Transcription

In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the period marks syllable breaks, as in the word "astronomical" . In practice, however, IPA transcription is typically divided into words by spaces, and often these spaces are also understood to be syllable breaks. In addition, the stress mark is placed immediately before a stressed syllable, and when the stressed syllable is in the middle of a word, in practice, the stress mark also marks a syllable break, for example in the word "understood" (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a full stop, e.g. ). When a word space comes in the middle of a syllable (that is, when a syllable spans words), a tie bar can be used for
liaison Liaison means communication between two or more groups, or co-operation or working together. Liaison or liaisons may refer to: General usage * Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship * Collaboration * Co-operation Arts and entertainment * Li ...
, as in the French combination ''les amis'' . The liaison tie is also used to join lexical words into phonological words, for example ''hot dog'' . A Greek sigma, , is used as a wild card for 'syllable', and a dollar/peso sign, , marks a syllable boundary where the usual period might be misunderstood. For example, is a pair of syllables, and is a syllable-final vowel.


Components


Typical model

In the typical theory of syllable structure, the general structure of a syllable (σ) consists of three segments. These segments are grouped into two components: ; Onset (ω): a consonant or
consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fi ...
, obligatory in some languages, optional or even restricted in others ;
Rime Rime may refer to: *Rime ice, ice that forms when water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects, such as trees Rime is also an alternative spelling of "rhyme" as a noun: *Syllable rime, term used in the study of phonology in ling ...
(ρ): right branch, contrasts with onset, splits into nucleus and coda :;
Nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...
(ν): a vowel or syllabic consonant, obligatory in most languages :;
Coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
(κ): a consonant or consonant cluster, optional in some languages, highly restricted or prohibited in others The syllable is usually considered right-branching, i.e. nucleus and coda are grouped together as a "rime" and are only distinguished at the second level. The ''nucleus'' is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. The ''onset'' is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the ''coda'' (literally 'tail') is the sound or sounds that follow the nucleus. They are sometimes collectively known as the ''shell''. The term ''rime'' covers the nucleus plus coda. In the one-syllable English word ''cat'', the nucleus is ''a'' (the sound that can be shouted or sung on its own), the onset ''c'', the coda ''t'', and the rime ''at''. This syllable can be abstracted as a ''consonant-vowel-consonant'' syllable, abbreviated ''CVC''. Languages vary greatly in the restrictions on the sounds making up the onset, nucleus and coda of a syllable, according to what is termed a language's phonotactics. Although every syllable has supra-segmental features, these are usually ignored if not semantically relevant, e.g. in tonal languages. ; Tone (τ): may be carried by the syllable as a whole or by the rime


Chinese model

In
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
syllable structure, the onset is replaced with an initial, and a semivowel or liquid forms another segment, called the medial. These four segments are grouped into two slightly different components: ;
Initial In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
(ι): optional onset, excluding sonorants ;
Final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...
(φ): medial, nucleus, and final consonant :; Medial (μ): optional semivowel or liquid :;
Nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...
(ν): a vowel or syllabic consonant :;
Coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
(κ): optional final consonant In many languages of the
Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...
, such as
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
, the syllable structure is expanded to include an additional, optional segment known as a medial, which is located between the onset (often termed the ''initial'' in this context) and the rime. The medial is normally a
semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
, but reconstructions of Old Chinese generally include liquid medials ( in modern reconstructions, in older versions), and many reconstructions of
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Sw ...
include a medial contrast between and , where the functions phonologically as a glide rather than as part of the nucleus. In addition, many reconstructions of both Old and Middle Chinese include complex medials such as , , and . The medial groups phonologically with the rime rather than the onset, and the combination of medial and rime is collectively known as the final. Some linguists, especially when discussing the modern Chinese varieties, use the terms "final" and "rime/rhyme" interchangeably. In
historical Chinese phonology Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably f ...
, however, the distinction between "final" (including the medial) and "rime" (not including the medial) is important in understanding the rime dictionaries and rime tables that form the primary sources for
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Sw ...
, and as a result most authors distinguish the two according to the above definition.


Grouping of components

In some theories of phonology, syllable structures are displayed as tree diagrams (similar to the trees found in some types of syntax). Not all phonologists agree that syllables have internal structure; in fact, some phonologists doubt the existence of the syllable as a theoretical entity. There are many arguments for a hierarchical relationship, rather than a linear one, between the syllable constituents. One hierarchical model groups the syllable nucleus and coda into an intermediate level, the ''rime''. The hierarchical model accounts for the role that the ''nucleus''+''coda'' constituent plays in verse (i.e., rhyming words such as ''cat'' and ''bat'' are formed by matching both the nucleus and coda, or the entire rime), and for the distinction between heavy and light syllables, which plays a role in phonological processes such as, for example, sound change in Old English and .


Body

In some traditional descriptions of certain languages such as
Cree The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations. In Canada, over 350,000 people are Cree or ...
and Ojibwe, the syllable is considered left-branching, i.e. onset and nucleus group below a higher-level unit, called a "body" or "core". This contrasts with the coda.


Rime

The rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a
nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...
and an optional
coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
. It is the part of the syllable used in most poetic rhymes, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech. The rime is usually the portion of a syllable from the first vowel to the end. For example, is the rime of all of the words ''at'', ''sat'', and ''flat''. However, the nucleus does not necessarily need to be a vowel in some languages. For instance, the rime of the second syllables of the words ''bottle'' and ''fiddle'' is just , a liquid consonant. Just as the rime branches into the nucleus and coda, the nucleus and coda may each branch into multiple
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
s. The limit for the number of phonemes which may be contained in each varies by language. For example,
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
and most Sino-Tibetan languages do not have consonant clusters at the beginning or end of syllables, whereas many Eastern European languages can have more than two consonants at the beginning or end of the syllable. In English, the onset, nucleus, and coda may all have two phonemes, as in the word ''flouts'': lin the onset, the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
ʊin the nucleus, and sin the coda. ''Rime'' and ''rhyme'' are variants of the same word, but the rarer form ''rime'' is sometimes used to mean specifically ''syllable rime'' to differentiate it from the concept of poetic
rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
. This distinction is not made by some linguists and does not appear in most dictionaries.


Weight

A heavy syllable is generally one with a ''branching rime'', i.e. it is either a ''closed syllable'' that ends in a consonant, or a syllable with a ''branching nucleus'', i.e. a long vowel or
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
. The name is a metaphor, based on the nucleus or coda having lines that branch in a tree diagram. In some languages, heavy syllables include both VV (branching nucleus) and VC (branching rime) syllables, contrasted with V, which is a light syllable. In other languages, only VV syllables are considered heavy, while both VC and V syllables are light. Some languages distinguish a third type of superheavy syllable, which consists of VVC syllables (with both a branching nucleus and rime) or VCC syllables (with a coda consisting of two or more consonants) or both. In moraic theory, heavy syllables are said to have two moras, while light syllables are said to have one and superheavy syllables are said to have three. Japanese phonology is generally described this way. Many languages forbid superheavy syllables, while a significant number forbid any heavy syllable. Some languages strive for constant syllable weight; for example, in stressed, non-final syllables in
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...
, short vowels co-occur with closed syllables while long vowels co-occur with open syllables, so that all such syllables are heavy (not light or superheavy). The difference between heavy and light frequently determines which syllables receive stress – this is the case in Latin and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
, for example. The system of
poetic meter In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of ...
in many classical languages, such as Classical Greek, Classical Latin, Old Tamil and Sanskrit, is based on syllable weight rather than stress (so-called ''quantitative rhythm'' or ''quantitative meter'').


Syllabification

Syllabification is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written. In most languages, the actually spoken syllables are the basis of syllabification in writing too. Due to the very weak correspondence between sounds and letters in the spelling of modern English, for example, written syllabification in English has to be based mostly on etymological i.e. morphological instead of phonetic principles. English written syllables therefore do not correspond to the actually spoken syllables of the living language. Phonotactic rules determine which sounds are allowed or disallowed in each part of the syllable. English allows very complicated syllables; syllables may begin with up to three consonants (as in ''strength''), and occasionally end with as many as five (as in ''angsts'', pronounced �ŋsts. (Some dialects of English pronounce ''strengths'' with a four-consonant onset, and ''angsts'' with a five-consonant coda: tʃɹɛŋkθand �ŋkstsrespectively.) Many other languages are much more restricted;
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, for example, only allows and a
chroneme In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun ''chroneme'' is derived , and the suffixed ''-eme'', which is analogous to the ''-eme'' in ''phoneme'' ...
in a coda, and theoretically has no consonant clusters at all, as the onset is composed of at most one consonant. The linking of a word-final consonant to a vowel beginning the word immediately following it forms a regular part of the phonetics of some languages, including Spanish, Hungarian, and Turkish. Thus, in Spanish, the phrase ('the men') is pronounced , Hungarian ('the human') as , and Turkish ('I hated it') as . In Italian, a final sound can be moved to the next syllable in enchainement, sometimes with a gemination: e.g., ('I've never had any of them') is broken into syllables as and ('I go there and she does as well') is realized as . A related phenomenon, called consonant mutation, is found in the Celtic languages like Irish and Welsh, whereby unwritten (but historical) final consonants affect the initial consonant of the following word.


Ambisyllabicity

There can be disagreement about the location of some divisions between syllables in spoken language. The problems of dealing with such cases have been most commonly discussed with relation to English. In the case of a word such as ''hurry'', the division may be or , neither of which seems a satisfactory analysis for a non-rhotic accent such as RP (British English): results in a syllable-final , which is not normally found, while gives a syllable-final short stressed vowel, which is also non-occurring. Arguments can be made in favour of one solution or the other: A general rule has been proposed that states that "Subject to certain conditions ..., consonants are syllabified with the more strongly stressed of two flanking syllables", while many other phonologists prefer to divide syllables with the consonant or consonants attached to the following syllable wherever possible. However, an alternative that has received some support is to treat an intervocalic consonant as ''ambisyllabic'', i.e. belonging both to the preceding and to the following syllable: . This is discussed in more detail in .


Onset

The onset (also known as anlaut) is the consonant sound or sounds at the beginning of a syllable, occurring before the
nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...
. Most syllables have an onset. Syllables without an onset may be said to have an ''empty'' or ''
zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usuall ...
onset'' – that is, nothing where the onset would be.


Onset cluster

Some languages restrict onsets to be only a single consonant, while others allow multiconsonant onsets according to various rules. For example, in English, onsets such as ''pr-'', ''pl-'' and ''tr-'' are possible but ''tl-'' is not, and ''sk-'' is possible but ''ks-'' is not. In Greek, however, both ''ks-'' and ''tl-'' are possible onsets, while contrarily in
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
no multiconsonant onsets are allowed at all.


Null onset

Some languages forbid null onsets. In these languages, words beginning in a vowel, like the English word ''at'', are impossible. This is less strange than it may appear at first, as most such languages allow syllables to begin with a phonemic glottal stop (the sound in the middle of English ''uh-oh'' or, in some dialects, the double T in ''button'', represented in the
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
as ). In English, a word that begins with a vowel may be pronounced with an epenthetic glottal stop when following a pause, though the glottal stop may not be a
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
in the language. Few languages make a phonemic distinction between a word beginning with a vowel and a word beginning with a glottal stop followed by a vowel, since the distinction will generally only be audible following another word. However, Maltese and some Polynesian languages do make such a distinction, as in Hawaiian ('fire') and / ← ('tuna') and Maltese ←
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
and Maltese ← Arabic . Ashkenazi and Sephardi Hebrew may commonly ignore , and , and Arabic forbid empty onsets. The names ''Israel'', ''Abel'', ''Abraham'', ''Omar'', ''Abdullah'', and ''Iraq'' appear not to have onsets in the first syllable, but in the original Hebrew and Arabic forms they actually begin with various consonants: the semivowel in , the glottal fricative in , the glottal stop in , or the pharyngeal fricative in , , and . Conversely, the
Arrernte language Arrernte or Aranda (; ) or sometimes referred to as Upper Arrernte (Upper Aranda), is a dialect cluster in the Arandic language group spoken in parts of the Northern Territory, Australia, by the Arrernte people. Other spelling variations are ...
of central Australia may prohibit onsets altogether; if so, all syllables have the underlying shape VC(C). The difference between a syllable with a null onset and one beginning with a glottal stop is often purely a difference of phonological analysis, rather than the actual pronunciation of the syllable. In some cases, the pronunciation of a (putatively) vowel-initial word when following another word – particularly, whether or not a glottal stop is inserted – indicates whether the word should be considered to have a null onset. For example, many Romance languages such as
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
never insert such a glottal stop, while English does so only some of the time, depending on factors such as conversation speed; in both cases, this suggests that the words in question are truly vowel-initial. But there are exceptions here, too. For example, standard
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
(excluding many southern accents) and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
both require that a glottal stop be inserted between a word and a following, putatively vowel-initial word. Yet such words are perceived to begin with a vowel in German but a glottal stop in Arabic. The reason for this has to do with other properties of the two languages. For example, a glottal stop does not occur in other situations in German, e.g. before a consonant or at the end of word. On the other hand, in Arabic, not only does a glottal stop occur in such situations (e.g. Classical "he asked", "opinion", "light"), but it occurs in alternations that are clearly indicative of its phonemic status (cf. Classical "writer" vs. /mak "written", "eater" vs. "eaten"). In other words, while the glottal stop is predictable in German (inserted only if a stressed syllable would otherwise begin with a vowel), the same sound is a regular consonantal phoneme in Arabic. The status of this consonant in the respective writing systems corresponds to this difference: there is no reflex of the glottal stop in German orthography, but there is a letter in the Arabic alphabet ( Hamza (ء)). The writing system of a language may not correspond with the phonological analysis of the language in terms of its handling of (potentially) null onsets. For example, in some languages written in the Latin alphabet, an initial glottal stop is left unwritten (see the German example); on the other hand, some languages written using non-Latin alphabets such as
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
s and
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel not ...
s have a special zero consonant to represent a null onset. As an example, in Hangul, the alphabet of the Korean language, a null onset is represented with ㅇ at the left or top section of a
grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...
, as in "station", pronounced ''yeok'', where the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
''yeo'' is the nucleus and ''k'' is the coda.


Nucleus

The ''nucleus'' is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. Generally, every syllable requires a nucleus (sometimes called the ''peak''), and the minimal syllable consists only of a nucleus, as in the English words "eye" or "owe". The syllable nucleus is usually a vowel, in the form of a monophthong,
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
, or triphthong, but sometimes is a syllabic consonant. In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can occur only in closed syllables. Therefore, these vowels are also called checked vowels, as opposed to the tense vowels that are called ''free vowels'' because they can occur even in open syllables.


Consonant nucleus

The notion of syllable is challenged by languages that allow long strings of obstruents without any intervening vowel or sonorant. By far the most common syllabic consonants are sonorants like , , , or , as in English ''bottle'', ''church'' (in rhotic accents), ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''lock n key''. However, English allows syllabic obstruents in a few para-verbal
onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...
utterances such as ''shh'' (used to command silence) and ''psst'' (used to attract attention). All of these have been analyzed as phonemically syllabic. Obstruent-only syllables also occur phonetically in some prosodic situations when unstressed vowels elide between obstruents, as in ''potato'' and ''today'' , which do not change in their number of syllables despite losing a syllabic nucleus. A few languages have so-called ''
syllabic fricative A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacri ...
s'', also known as ''fricative vowels'', at the phonemic level. (In the context of Chinese phonology, the related but non-synonymous term ''apical vowel'' is commonly used.) Mandarin Chinese is famous for having such sounds in at least some of its dialects, for example the pinyin syllables ''sī shī rī'', usually pronounced , respectively. Though, like the nucleus of rhotic English ''church'', there is debate over whether these nuclei are consonants or vowels. Languages of the northwest coast of North America, including
Salishan The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by ...
,
Wakashan Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...
and
Chinookan The Chinookan languages were a small family of languages spoken in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia River by Chinook peoples. Although the last known native speaker of any Chinookan language died in 2012, the 2009-2013 American Community ...
languages, allow
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
s and
voiceless fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
s as syllables at the phonemic level, in even the most careful enunciation. An example is Chinook 'those two women are coming this way out of the water'. Linguists have analyzed this situation in various ways, some arguing that such syllables have no nucleus at all and some arguing that the concept of "syllable" cannot clearly be applied at all to these languages. Other examples: ; Nuxálk (Bella Coola) : 'you spat on me' : 'he arrived' : 'he had in his possession a bunchberry plant' : 'seal blubber' In Bagemihl's survey of previous analyses, he finds that the Bella Coola word 'he arrived' would have been parsed into 0, 2, 3, 5, or 6 syllables depending on which analysis is used. One analysis would consider all vowel and consonant segments as syllable nuclei, another would consider only a small subset ( fricatives or sibilants) as nuclei candidates, and another would simply deny the existence of syllables completely. However, when working with recordings rather than transcriptions, the syllables can be obvious in such languages, and native speakers have strong intuitions as to what the syllables are. This type of phenomenon has also been reported in Berber languages (such as Indlawn Tashlhiyt Berber),
Mon–Khmer languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
(such as Semai, Temiar,
Khmu The Khmu (; Khmu: ; lo, ຂະມຸ ; th, ขมุ ; vi, Khơ Mú; ; my, ခမူ) are an ethnic group of Southeast Asia. The majority (88%) live in northern Laos where they constitute the largest minority ethnic group, comprising elev ...
) and the Ōgami dialect of Miyako, a
Ryukyuan language The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. Al ...
. ; Indlawn Tashlhiyt Berber : 'you sprained it and then gave it' : 'rot' (imperf.) ; Semai : 'short, fat arms'


Coda

The coda (also known as auslaut) comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the
nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...
. The sequence of nucleus and coda is called a
rime Rime may refer to: *Rime ice, ice that forms when water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects, such as trees Rime is also an alternative spelling of "rhyme" as a noun: *Syllable rime, term used in the study of phonology in ling ...
. Some syllables consist of only a nucleus, only an onset and a nucleus with no coda, or only a nucleus and coda with no onset. The phonotactics of many languages forbid syllable codas. Examples are Swahili and Hawaiian. In others, codas are restricted to a small subset of the consonants that appear in onset position. At a phonemic level in
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, for example, a coda may only be a nasal (homorganic with any following consonant) or, in the middle of a word,
gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
of the following consonant. (On a phonetic level, other codas occur due to elision of /i/ and /u/.) In other languages, nearly any consonant allowed as an onset is also allowed in the coda, even clusters of consonants. In English, for example, all onset consonants except are allowed as syllable codas. If the coda consists of a consonant cluster, the sonority typically decreases from first to last, as in the English word ''help''. This is called the
sonority hierarchy A sonority hierarchy or sonority scale is a hierarchical ranking of speech sounds (or phones). Sonority is loosely defined as the loudness of speech sounds relative to other sounds of the same pitch, length and stress, therefore sonority is ofte ...
(or sonority scale). English onset and coda clusters are therefore different. The onset in ''strengths'' does not appear as a coda in any English word. However, some clusters do occur as both onsets and codas, such as in ''stardust''. The sonority hierarchy is more strict in some languages and less strict in others.


Open and closed

A coda-less syllable of the form V, CV, CCV, etc. (V = vowel, C = consonant) is called an open syllable or free syllable, while a syllable that has a coda (VC, CVC, CVCC, etc.) is called a closed syllable or checked syllable. They have nothing to do with open and
close vowel A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of th ...
s, but are defined according to the phoneme that ends the syllable: a vowel (open syllable) or a consonant (closed syllable). Almost all languages allow open syllables, but some, such as Hawaiian, do not have closed syllables. When a syllable is not the last syllable in a word, the nucleus normally must be followed by two consonants in order for the syllable to be closed. This is because a single following consonant is typically considered the onset of the following syllable. For example, Spanish ("to marry") is composed of an open syllable followed by a closed syllable (''ca-sar''), whereas "to get tired" is composed of two closed syllables (''can-sar''). When a geminate (double) consonant occurs, the syllable boundary occurs in the middle, e.g. Italian "cream" (''pan-na''); cf. Italian "bread" (''pa-ne''). English words may consist of a single closed syllable, with nucleus denoted by ν, and coda denoted by κ: *i''n'': ν = , κ = *cu''p'': ν = , κ = *ta''ll'': ν = , κ = *mi''lk'': ν = , κ = *ti''nts'': ν = , κ = *fi''fths'': ν = , κ = *si''xths'': ν = , κ = *twe''lfths'': ν = , κ = *stre''ngths'': ν = , κ = English words may also consist of a single open syllable, ending in a nucleus, without a coda: *''glue'', ν = *''pie'', ν = *''though'', ν = *''boy'', ν = A list of examples of syllable codas in English is found at English phonology#Coda.


Null coda

Some languages, such as Hawaiian, forbid codas, so that all syllables are open.


Suprasegmental features

The domain of suprasegmental features is the syllable (or some larger unit), but not a specific sound. That is to say, these features may effect more than a single segment, and possibly all segments of a syllable: * Stress * Tone * *
Suprasegmental palatalization In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, st ...
Sometimes
syllable length In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllabl ...
is also counted as a suprasegmental feature; for example, in some Germanic languages, long vowels may only exist with short consonants and vice versa. However, syllables can be analyzed as compositions of long and short phonemes, as in Finnish and Japanese, where consonant gemination and vowel length are independent.


Tone

In most languages, the pitch or pitch contour in which a syllable is pronounced conveys shades of meaning such as emphasis or surprise, or distinguishes a statement from a question. In tonal languages, however, the pitch affects the basic lexical meaning (e.g. "cat" vs. "dog") or grammatical meaning (e.g. past vs. present). In some languages, only the pitch itself (e.g. high vs. low) has this effect, while in others, especially East Asian languages such as
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
, Thai or Vietnamese, the shape or contour (e.g. level vs. rising vs. falling) also needs to be distinguished.


Accent

Syllable structure often interacts with stress or pitch accent. In Latin, for example, stress is regularly determined by syllable weight, a syllable counting as heavy if it has at least one of the following: * a long vowel in its
nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...
* a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
in its nucleus * one or more codas In each case the syllable is considered to have two
morae A mora (plural ''morae'' or ''moras''; often symbolized μ) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ''ba'' consists of one mora (''monomoraic''), ...
. The first syllable of a word is the initial syllable and the last syllable is the final syllable. In languages accented on one of the last three syllables, the last syllable is called the ultima, the next-to-last is called the penult, and the third syllable from the end is called the antepenult. These terms come from Latin ' "last", ' "almost last", and ' "before almost last". In Ancient Greek, there are three
accent marks A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
(acute, circumflex, and grave), and terms were used to describe words based on the position and type of accent. Some of these terms are used in the description of other languages.


History

Guilhem Molinier Guilhem Molinier or Moulinier ( 1330–50) was a medieval Occitan poet from Toulouse. His most notable work is ''Leys d'amors'' ("Laws of Love"), a treatise on rhetoric and grammar that achieved great notoriety and, beyond the Occitan, influenced ...
, a member of the
Consistori del Gay Saber The Consistori del Gay Saber (; "Consistory of the Gay Science") was a poetic academy founded at Toulouse in 1323 to revive and perpetuate the lyric poetry of the troubadours. Also known as the Acadèmia dels Jòcs Florals or Académie des Jeux ...
, which was the first literary academy in the world and held the
Floral Games Floral Games were any of a series of historically related poetry contests with floral prizes. In Occitan, their original language, and Catalan they are known as '' Jocs florals'' (; modern Occitan: ''Jòcs florals'' , or ''floraus'' ). In French t ...
to award the best
troubadour A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairit ...
with the ''violeta d'aur'' top prize, gave a definition of the syllable in his ''
Leys d'amor Guilhem Molinier or Moulinier ( 1330–50) was a medieval Occitan poet from Toulouse. His most notable work is ''Leys d'amors'' ("Laws of Love"), a treatise on rhetoric and grammar that achieved great notoriety and, beyond the Occitan, influenced ...
'' (1328–1337), a book aimed at regulating then-flourishing Occitan poetry:


See also

* English phonology#Phonotactics. Covers syllable structure in English. * Entering tone * IPA symbols for syllables *
Line (poetry) A line is a unit of language into which a poem or play is divided. The use of a line operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures, such as the sentence or single clauses in sentences. ...
*
List of the longest English words with one syllable This is a list of candidates for the longest English word of one syllable, i.e. monosyllables with the most letters. A list of 9,123 English monosyllables published in 1957 includes three ten-letter words: ''scraunched'', ''scroonched'', and ''squ ...
*
Minor syllable Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as i ...
* Mora (linguistics) * Phonology * Pitch accent *
Stress (linguistics) In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
* Syllabary writing system * Syllabic consonant *
Syllabification Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English o ...
* Syllable (computing) * Timing (linguistics)


References


Sources and recommended reading

* * * * * * *


External links


Syllable Dictionary: Look up the number of syllables in a word. Learn to divide into syllables. Hear it pronounced.

Do syllables have internal structure? What is their status in phonology? CUNY Phonology Forum

Syllable Word Counter A comprehensive database of words and their syllables

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