The syllable may be defined as one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance which may be a whole word, e.g. man, I, or a part of it, e.g. morning.
In English a syllable is formed by any vowel (monophthong, diphthong, disyllabic vowel cluster) alone or in combination with one or more consonants and by a word-final sonorant (lateral or nasal) immediately preceded by a consonant:
e.g. 1) are, he, man.
2) table, student, garden.
NOTE: The sonorants may lose their syllabic function when they occur in the middle of a word before a vowel belonging to a suffix.
e.g. listen / ˈlɪsn/ listening / ˈlɪs-nɪŋ/
drizzle /ˈdrɪzl/ drizzling /ˈdrɪz-lɪŋ /
SYLLABLE DIVISION of English words is governed by the following principal rules:
1) The English long monophthongs, diphthongs and the unstressed short vowels/ɪ,ə,ʊ/ always occur in a phonetically open syllables (consisting of actually pronounced speech sounds) when they are separated from the following syllables by only one consonant.
e.g.: meeting / mi׃-tɪŋ/, army / ɑ׃-mi/, ordinarily /ɔ׃-dɪ-nə-rɪ-li/, voices /vɔɪ-sɪz/, housing / haʊ-zɪŋ/, people /pi׃-pl/, garden /gɑ׃-dn/.
2) A short stressed vowel in the same position always occurs in closed syllable, the syllabic boundary being within the consonant.
e.g.: city /ˈsɪt-ti/, body /ˈbɒd-di/, Spanish /ˈspæn-nɪʃ/, study/ˈstʌd-di/.
NOTE: Correct syllable division at the junction of words may be of phonological importance in English, as wrong syllable division may lead to confusion of one word with another.
e.g.: a name an aim
a nice house an ice house
she saw the meat she saw them eat
peace talks pea stalks
Types of Stressed Syllables
There exist 4 types of stressed syllable:
I. open (C) +V, C+V+C+ silent e
II. closed (C) +V+C
III. covered C+V+r, C+V+r+C, C+V+r+C+ silent e
IV. uncovered C+V+r+V
| Types of stressed syllable | Aa /eɪ/ | Oo /əʊ/ | Ee /i׃/ | I i /aɪ/ | Yy/waɪ/ | Uu /ju׃/ |
| open (C)+V | date /deɪt/ | dome /dəʊm/ | Eve / i׃v / | fine /faɪn/ | type /taɪp/ | tube /tju׃b/ |
| closed C+V+C | pan /pæn / | spot /spɒt/ | tent /tent/ | kilt /kɪlt/ | myth /mɪθ/ | mud /mʌd/ |
| covered C+V+r+(C) | large / lɑ׃ʤ/ | car /kɑ׃/ | herd /hɜ׃d/ | bird /bɜ׃d/ | myrtle /mɜ׃tl/ | burn /bɜ׃n/ |
| uncovered C+V+r+V | care /keə/ | story /stɔ׃ri/ | here /hɪə/ | fire /faɪə/ | tyre /taɪə/ | pure /pjʊə/ |
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Reading of Vowels in Unstressed Position
1. the letters e, i, y plus the silent e in the following syllable or without it produce the sound /ɪ/.
e.g. pock e t, byc i cle.
2. the letters o, u, a without the silent e in the following syllable produce the sound /ə/.
e.g. pil o t, cinem a, circ u s.
3. the letter o in the word final position produces the sound / əʊ /.
4. a vowel in the word final position is not pronounced at all in case it is followed by a syllabic sonant /l, n, m/.
e.g. final /faɪnl/, lesson/lesn/, vessel/vesl/.
Section 5. T PNETIC PHENOMENA TO BE PRACTISED BY FOREIGN LEARNERS TO AVOID A FOREIGN ACCENT
