ADAM BROWN
The topic of this chapter is one that is often overlooked in the description of language: syllables and their internal structure. The paper starts with a discussion of why the syllable is an important unit. The structure of the syllable is then examined, and English syllable structure is shown to be more complex than that of most other languages. After this preliminary basic explanation, various problems with it are investigated.
It is not possible in a paper of this length to go into all the rules that could be stated about English syllable structure. Instead, eight such rules are presented, as an indication of how complex English syllable structure is. While the word rule is used, these are generalizations about what does and does not occur, and they have fuzzy edges, rather than the stricter sense, as in the rules of football. The notion of whether syllables are regular (i.e., follow the rules) is distinguished from whether they are occurring as words or in words of English. We examine the way in which loanwords that are borrowed from one language to another are usually changed, if necessary, in order to conform to the syllable structure rules of the borrowing language.
Finally, the relevance of syllable structure to language teaching is explained.
Many people instinctively believe that the word is the most important unit in a language. One reason for this may be that they are influenced by spelling. Words are clearly units in spelling, as they have spaces or punctuation either side. In pronunciation, there are units that are larger and smaller than the word, and the syllable is one of the most important. In view of this, it is surprising that many of the descriptions of individual languages on Wikipedia and elsewhere analyze the vowel and consonant segments, and the suprasegmentals (stress, intonation, etc.), but say nothing about the syllable structure of the language.
There are several reasons why the syllable is an important unit. Some reasons relate to the fact that syllables are psychologically real to language users.
There are some languages whose writing systems are based on the syllable, rather than the individual vowel and consonant sounds. The kana (hiragana and katakana) system of Japanese is the most familiar example of this (Bowring and Laurie 2004), but there are many others: Akkadian (Mesopotamia, extinct), Bopomofo (China, Taiwan), Cherokee (Southeast USA), Linear B (Greece, extinct), Mayan (Central America), Pahawh Hmong (Laos, Vietnam), and Vai (Liberia).
Everyone, regardless of their native language and its writing system, seems to be able to identify by and large how many syllables words contain (but see the section Problems in syllabification below). That is, it is a unit that people are consciously aware of. “[I]ndeed, explicit awareness of syllables [by children] has been shown to developmentally precede explicit awareness of phonemes” (Gnanadesikan 2008).
Literacy experts are agreed that an awareness of the syllables in a word, the sounds that make up the syllables, and of phenomena such as alliteration and rhyme (see below) are essential for efficient spellers of English (Carson, Gillon, and Boustead 2013; HearBuilder n.d.; Justice et al. 2013; Moats 2010; Moats and Tolman 2009; Wilson 2013).
Other reasons relate to the place of the syllable in linguistic analysis.
The syllable fits nicely into a hierarchy of phonological units. Features (such as [± voice], [± labial]) are present in segments (vowels and consonants). Segments make up syllables. Syllables combine into feet, units used in the analysis of speech rhythm, and tone groups, units used in intonational analysis, may be composed of one or more feet.
Stress in words is placed on syllables rather than individual vowel and consonant phonemes. For example, the noun insight and the verb incite have identical phonemes. The difference in their pronunciation is the stress placement, on the first or second syllable: insight /ˈɪnsaɪt/ˌ incite /ɪnˈsaɪt/, where /ˈ/ marks the start of the stressed syllable. Similarly, the intonational focus (tonic; see Chapters 8 and 10 on intonation) of an utterance falls on a particular syllable, rather than a phoneme or word. For instance, an utterance “It’s absolutely ridiculous!” is likely to have the tonic (probably a fall from high to low) on the second syllable of ridiculous.
The syllable is the largest unit that is required for accounting for the combinations of phonemes in a language. For instance, is the sequence /mftfr/ possible in English? The answer is “yes”, as in the phrase triumphed frequently. However, because of syllable constraints, there must be a syllable division between /mft/ and /fr/.
Many of the rules accounting for the occurrence of variants (allophones) of sounds (phonemes) can only be stated in terms of the syllable. For example, many accents of English distinguish between a “clear” /l/, with the tongue bunched upwards and forwards towards the hard palate, and a “dark” /l/, with the tongue bunched upwards and backwards towards the soft palate; in these accents, clear /l/ occurs at the beginning of syllables, as in lick, while dark /l/ occurs at the end of syllables, as in kill.
Some differences between languages in the occurrence of sounds can only be stated in terms of the syllable and its structure. For example, the sounds /h/ and /ŋ/ occur in English and many other languages. However, in English /h/ can only occur at the beginning of a syllable, as in help, behave (/hɛlp, bɪ.heɪv/, where the dot marks the syllable division). However, there are languages, such as Arabic, Malay, and Urdu, where /h/ can occur at the ends of syllables, e.g., Malay basah /basah/ “wet”. Notice that, in analysing syllable structure, we are talking about sounds (phonemes); the spelling is irrelevant. Thus, while many English words end in an h letter, this letter never represents an /h/ sound. It may be silent as in messiah, cheetah, or may work in combination with another letter, as in th (path), ph (graph), sh (fish), gh (laugh) and ch (rich). Note also that, while one-syllable (monosyllabic) words may often be given here as examples, they are given as examples of syllables, not of words. Also, differences between British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) are discussed where relevant.
Likewise, while /ŋ/ can occur in syllable-final position in English, as in sang, ring, it cannot occur in syllable-initial position. However, it can in other languages (Anderson n.d. a, n.d. b) including Fijian, Malay/Indonesian, Māori, Thai, and Vietnamese; for instance, the Thai word for “snake” is /ŋu:/.
Some differences in sound combinations between languages can only be stated in terms of the syllable and its structure. For example, both English and German have the /p, f, l/ sounds. While English has the sequence /pfl/ in an example such as hipflask, this is only possible because there is a syllable (and morpheme) break between the syllable-final /p/ and the syllable-initial /fl/. In German, on the other hand, words can start with /pfl/ as in pflegen “to be accustomed (to doing something)”. Therefore, while both languages have all three sounds, and both languages have sequences of /pfl/, in German these can all be in syllable-initial position, but in English they can only be across a syllable boundary in the middle of a word. This explains why English speakers find German words like this non-English and awkward to pronounce.
The syllables that make up words are analyzed in terms of three positions. The minimal type of syllable is composed of only a vowel, e.g., eye /aɪ/, owe /oʊ/. The vowel is therefore considered a central part of any syllable, and is in peak position (also called syllabic, syllable-medial, and nuclear). Before the vowel, there may be one or more consonants, e.g., tie /taɪ/, sty /staɪ/. This position is known as the onset (also called syllable-initial or releasing). After the vowel, there may also be one or more consonants, e.g., isle /aɪl/, isles /aɪlz/. This position is known as the coda (also called syllable-final, offset or arresting). Table 5.1 shows various possibilities, where C stands for any consonant, V for any vowel, and O for an empty position. Syllables with an empty coda position are called open syllables, while closed syllables have final consonants.
Table 5.1 Syllable structure of various English words.
Word | Onset | Peak | Coda | Formula |
eye | aɪ | OVO | ||
isle | aɪ | l | OVC | |
tie | t | aɪ | CVO | |
tile | t | aɪ | l | CVC |
isles | aɪ | lz | OVCC | |
sty | st | aɪ | CCVO | |
style | st | aɪ | l | CCVC |
tiles | t | aɪ | lz | CVCC |
styles | st | aɪ | lz | CCVCC |
More than one consonant in either the onset or coda position is known as a cluster. Therefore the last five possibilities above contain clusters. The largest cluster in the onset position in English has three consonants, as in string /strɪŋ/. The largest cluster in the coda position has four consonants, as in sculpts /skʌlpts/. Often, large final clusters in English are simplified; for example, the /t/ of sculpts may be omitted (elided; see Chapter 9 on connected speech processes). Nevertheless, it is certainly there in an underlying sense.
We can thus represent English syllable structure by the formula C 0-3 V C 0-4. Syllable structure formulae for other languages are given in Table 5.2.
Table 5.2 Syllable structure of various languages.
Māori | C 0-1 V O | (i.e., only OVO and CVO syllables) |
Cantonese | C 0-1 V C 0-1 | (i.e., no clusters) |
Spanish | C 0-2 V C 0-1 | (i.e., initial clusters but no final clusters) |
Arabic | C 0-1 V C 0-2 | (i.e., final clusters but no initial clusters) |
Russian | C 0-4 V C 0-4 | (i.e., initial clusters and final clusters, both with up to 4 consonants) |
The syllable structure of English is thus more complex than that of most languages. In an analysis of syllable structure, Maddieson (n.d.) divided languages of the world into three categories:
Of the 486 languages investigated, the distribution was:
Simple syllable structure | 61 |
Moderately complex syllable structure | 274 |
Complex syllable structure | 151 |
English is clearly at the complex end of the syllable structure spectrum. For this reason, it is not surprising that English pronunciation is often simplified by foreign learners. Since learners are statistically likely to come from native languages with less complex syllable structures than English, they may find the clusters of English difficult and simplify them in various ways (see below). Similarly, in the developmental speech of native children, consonants are first learnt individually before being combined into clusters; as a result clusters are simplified in the meantime before they are mastered (Williamson 2010).
There is a close bond between the peak and the coda, known together as the rhyme (sometimes spelt rime). Rhyme is an everyday concept in poetry, song lyrics, etc. Two syllables rhyme if they have identical peaks and codas. Imperfect rhyme means that the peaks and codas are not quite identical.The following limerick is said to have been written as a parody of Einstein’s theory of relativity:
A rocket inventor named Wright /raɪt/
Once travelled much faster than light. /laɪt/
He departed one day /deɪ/
In a relative way /weɪ/
And returned on the previous night. /naɪt/
Wright, light, and night rhyme because they all end in /aɪt/, and day and way rhyme with /eɪ/. Multisyllable words rhyme if everything is identical from the vowel of the stressed syllable onwards, e.g., computer and tutor rhyme because they have identical /u:tə(r)/ from the stressed /u:/ vowel (/kəmˈpju:tə(r), ˈtju:tə(r)/, where /ˈ/ marks the start of the stressed syllable and (r) indicates that the /r/ is pronounced by some speakers and not by others (see Rhoticity below). Notice again that these phenomena relate to sounds; spelling is irrelevant to the discussion. Both these points are illustrated by the following limerick:
There was a young hunter named Shepherd /ˈʃɛpə(r)d/
Who was eaten for lunch by a leopard. /ˈlɛpə(r)d/
Said the leopard, replete, /rɪˈpli:t/
“He’d have gone down a treat /ˈtri:t/
If he had been salted and peppered!” /ˈpɛpə(r)d/
While the peak and coda are known as the rhyme, this leaves the onset as an independent element, and it has its own feature, known as alliteration. Syllables are said to alliterate if they contain identical onsets. Imperfect alliteration involves syllables whose onsets are not quite identical. Alliteration is a common feature of:
Spoonerisms occur when the onsets of (the first syllables of) two words are transposed. Here are some slips attributed to Reverend Dr. William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930). The letters corresponding to the transposed sounds are underlined.
Spoonerisms are a type of slip of the tongue (Cutler 1982; Fromkin 1980). Slips of the tongue (or “tips of the slung”) again show the division between the onset and the rhyme.
The preceding discussion will hopefully have convinced you of the importance of syllables, but may also have led you to assume that the syllable is a simple unproblematic concept. This section examines some of the problems associated with syllables.
Speakers may differ in their opinions as to the number of syllables particular words have. These differences may arise from various factors:
While the syllable may seem a clear entity, there is no universally agreed definition of the syllable. Three attempts to define the syllable (one articulatory, one acoustic, and one auditory) will be discussed here.
The prominence theory of the syllable is based on auditory judgments. Syllables correspond to peaks in prominence, usually corresponding to the number of vowels.
In the sonority theory (see, for example, Ladefoged and Johnson 2010), which is probably the most reliable and useful of the three attempts to define the syllable, syllables correspond to peaks in sonority. Sonority is the relative loudness (acoustic amplitude) of sounds compared with other sounds. This can be plotted on a scale of sonority (most sonorous first):
While this works in most cases, there are exceptions. For instance, the word believe /bɪli:v/ has two vowels and two peaks of sonority. However, the word spy /spaɪ/ has one vowel, but the /s/ has greater sonority than the /p/; it also therefore has two peaks of sonority. Thus, whereas both words have two peaks of sonority, the first is clearly two syllables but the second only one. Many languages do not have initial clusters like /sp/ and they are often pronounced as two syllables by foreign learners. Similarly, instances involving syllabic consonants (see below) are counterexamples, e.g., hid names and hidden aims may involve the same sequence of phonemes /hɪdneɪmz/, but the first is two syllables while the second is three (involving a syllabic consonant; see below).
The articulatory chest pulse theory relates to the contraction of the intercostal muscles surrounding the lungs as they push air out during speech. It has been claimed (Gimson 1980: 56) that the number of chest pulses determines the number of syllables. This theory has been used most notably by Abercrombie (see, for example, 1967) in differentiating between syllable pulses and stress pulses, in order to formulate a theory of rhythm in speech.
While speakers can usually tell how many syllables a word has, there may be confusion as to where one syllable ends and the next begins. For instance, in sequences where two vowels are separated by one or more consonants (e.g., photon, pastor, outgrow, obstruct), do these consonants belong with the first or the second syllable, or are they divided between them? Various writers (e.g., Wells 1990; Eddington, Treiman, and Elzinga 2013a, 2013b; Redford and Randall 2005) have researched this, investigating the features that correlate with syllabification preferences and proposing principles to account for them. Reasonably uncontroversial principles are the following:
However, that still leaves a number of more controversial examples, and the following principles (which are incompatible with each other) have been proposed:
Eddington, Treiman, and Elzinga (2013a) report that “80% or more of the subjects agreed on the syllabification of 45% of the items with four medial consonants, 69% of the items with three consonants, and 80% of the words with two consonants. What is surprising is that this number drops to 50% for words with a single medial consonant in spite of the fact that only two syllabification responses are possible.” This leaves a fair amount of listener variability, even for examples with only two possible responses, which are split perfectly. Perhaps for this reason, an ambisyllabicity principle has long been proposed whereby an intervocalic consonant can be analyzed as belonging to both the preceding and the following syllable (Anderson and Jones 1974; Lass 1984: 266). By this analysis, the /b/ of a word like habit is shared between the two syllables: /[hæ [b]ɪt]/, where the square brackets show syllable boundaries.
For many purposes, these are problems that do not need to be solved. As Wells (2000: xxi), who uses spaces in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary to represent syllable boundaries, says, “any user of the dictionary who finds it difficult to accept the LPD approach to syllabification can simply ignore the syllable spaces.”
In the above explanation, we stated that the onset and coda positions are occupied by consonant sounds and the peak position by vowel sounds. That is not the whole truth and counterexamples now need to be discussed.
There are many one-syllable words that have the structure /*ɛt/, that is, their peak and coda (rhyme) is /ɛt/. They include pet, bet, debt, get, jet, vet, set, met, net, het (up). These all clearly have /ɛt/ preceded by a consonant sound (/pɛt, bɛt, dɛt, gɛt, dʒɛt, vɛt, sɛt, mɛt, nɛt, hɛt/).
There are also the words yet and wet, although it may be unclear whether the initial sounds are consonants or not. In answering this, we need to distinguish between phonetic form (the way these sounds are articulated) and phonological function (the way they function in syllables). In terms of function, these sounds seem to occur in the onset position and the words have the same structure /*ɛt/. However, in terms of form, they are unlike the other consonants. If you slow down the initial sounds of yet and wet, you will appreciate that they are articulated like, and sound like, the vowels /i:/ and /u:/, as in tea and two. That is, the tongue and lips do not form any substantial obstruction to the airstream, which escapes relatively freely. Therefore, in terms of function, they are nonsyllabic, in that they do not occur in the peak position, but in terms of form they are vowel-like (vocoid). As a result, /j, w/ are often referred to as semi-vowels.
A further complication relates to the pronunciation of words such as sudden and middle. Both words are clearly two syllables, and in their fullest form would be pronounced /sʌdən, mɪdəl/, that is, with a schwa vowel after the /d/. However, this pronunciation was described as “strikingly unusual – and even childish” by Gimson (1980: 320), and it is much more usual to run from the /d/ straight into the /n, l/ without any intervening schwa vowel.
Let us analyse this from the articulatory point of view. The /d/ sound is a voiced alveolar oral-stop (plosive). This means that the tongue comes into contact with the alveolar ridge behind the upper teeth, completely stopping the airstream. The /n/ sound is a voiced alveolar nasal-stop. Thus, in going from a /d/ to an /n/, the tongue does not move, as it is already in the required position. Instead, the soft palate (velum) leading to the nose opens, so that air escapes through the nose. This is known as nasal release of the /d/.
A similar transition occurs with /l/, a voiced alveolar lateral-approximant. Therefore, in going from an /d/ to an /l/, the velum does not move, as both sounds are oral. Instead, the tongue sides lose contact, allowing air to escape over the sides; the tongue tip maintains contact. This is known as lateral release of the /d/.
In terms of syllable structure, these pronunciations mean that we have two-syllable words, but with no vowel sound in the second syllable, as the /n, l/ sounds are clearly pronounced like consonants with substantial obstruction to the airstream (contoids). We thus analyse the consonants /n, l/ as occupying the peak position in the second syllable, and label them syllabic consonants. They are shown by a subscript tick: /sʌdn̩, mɪdl̩/. This situation is summarized in Table 5.3.
Table 5.3 Sounds analysed in terms of their phonetic form and phonological function in the syllable.
Phonological function | |||
Syllabic | Non-syllabic | ||
Phonetic | Vocoid | Vowels /i:, æ, u:, ɔɪ/ etc | Semi-vowels /j, w/ |
form | Contoid | Syllabic consonants /n̩, l̩/ | Consonants /p, l, n, k/ etc |
It is, of course, impossible to discuss all the permutations of phonemes allowed by the syllable structure of English in any depth in this chapter. For a more thorough description, see Cruttenden (2008: sec. 10.10) for BrE and Kreidler (2008: chs 5 and 6) for AmE. Instead, a few selected generalizations about English syllable structure will be examined. The first is designed to elicit various problems with analyzing the syllable structure of English.
A common pattern for two-consonant initial clusters is for the first consonant to be /s/. Although there are 24 consonants in English, fewer than half of them can follow /s/ in a CC cluster. Consonants cannot follow themselves in clusters, that is, there is no /ss/ initial cluster. Those that can follow /s/ fall into categories by manner of articulation (the kind of sound they are):
In summary, only seven consonants follow initial /s/ uncontroversially, while another four are dubious.
If all the permutations of the six plosives /p, b, t, d, k, g/ and the four approximants /l, r, w, j/ existed, there would be 24 possible combinations. However, only 18 of the 24 possible combinations occur, e.g., play, bring, quick /pleɪ, brɪŋ, kwɪk/. The following do not occur: /pw, bw, tl, dl, gw, gj/. There are some rare words and foreign loanwords that contain these clusters (e.g., pueblo, bwana, Tlingit, guava, guano, gules), but no common native words.
Three-consonant initial clusters can be considered a combination of the two patterns just described. In such clusters in English, the first consonant can only be /s/, the second must be a voiceless plosive /p, t, k/, and the third an approximant /l, r, w, j/, e.g., spring /sprɪŋ/, split /splɪt/, squid /skwɪd/. However, again, not all 12 possible permutations occur: /spw, stl, stw/ do not exist.
Some speakers of English pronounce two /r/ sounds in the phrase car park, while others pronounce none. That is, speakers either have both or neither of what is represented by the r letter in the spelling. In phonological terms, speakers either can or cannot have /r/ in the coda position in the syllable. Accents that have syllable-final /r/ are called rhotic, while the others are nonrhotic.
This difference is pervasive throughout the phonology of accents of English. In Shakespeare’s day, all speakers of English had syllable-final /r/ (were rhotic). However, a change spread from the Southeast of England and /r/ was dropped in the coda position. This nonrhoticity change spread to most areas of England and Wales; however, it did not affect Scotland and Ireland. The status of countries that England colonized or where native speakers migrated depends on the most influential part of Britain that they came from. Nonrhotic accents include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Trinidad, certain eastern and southern parts of the United States, and most of England and Wales. Rhotic accents include Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Barbados, certain western parts of England, and most of the United States. Because most US speakers are rhotic, rhotic speakers are in the majority in global numerical terms.
Learners of English tend to be rhotic if (i) their native language allows syllable-final /r/ and/or (ii) AmE is more influential than BrE.
The phoneme /ʒ/ is a peculiar one in the phonology of English. It commonly occurs in the middle of words such as vision, as the result of a historical process like that described above for assume. It is a moot point whether this is final in the first syllable or initial in the second. On occasions like this, analysts often consider whether the sound(s) can occur at the beginnings or ends of words, that is, as the onset of the first syllable or the coda of the final syllable of a multisyllable word. However, in this case this is inconclusive as no native English words begin or end with /ʒ/. There are plenty of words used in English that begin or end with /ʒ/, but they all have clear foreign origins, usually French: gendarme, genre, Giselle, je ne sais quoi, joie de vivre; barrage, beige, blancmange, camouflage, collage, cortege, dressage, entourage, espionage, fuselage, liege, luge, massage, mirage, montage, prestige, rouge.
One of three things can happen with loanwords like these:
Notice, however, that the above processes depend on how recently the word was borrowed into English and whether it has been fully integrated, like garage. Other fully integrated French loanwords include mortgage and visage.
One-syllable words that have no final consonant sound fall into only two categories, in terms of the vowel:
Such syllables, without final consonants, that is, with empty codas, are termed open.
Words that contain a final /ŋ/ sound fall into only one category, in terms of the vowel preceding the /ŋ/. The vowel preceding the /ŋ/ is a short monophthong vowel: /ɪ/ (ring /rɪŋ/), /æ/ (hang /hæŋ/), /ʌ/ (tongue /tʌŋ/). Examples with the other short vowels are rarer, e.g., length /lɛŋθ/, kung fu /kʊŋ fu:/. BrE examples with /ɒ/ (long /lɒŋ/) continue this pattern, although they are pronounced with long /ɑ:/ in AmE.
In summary, only long vowels can occur in open syllables with no final consonant. Secondly, short vowels can only occur in closed syllables with a final consonant. This is true with /ŋ/; the only exceptions are examples where assimilation (see Chapter 9 on connected speech processes) has taken place, e.g., green card /gri:n kɑ:(r)d/ > /gri:ŋ kɑ:(r)d/. It is also true with other consonants, e.g., tip, bet, sack, bomb, good /tɪp, bɛt, sæk, bɒm, gʊd/ occur, but not /tɪ, bɛ, sæ, (bɒ,) gʊ/.
There are plenty of examples of consonant + /j/ initial clusters: puma /pju:mə/, cute /kju:t/, future /fju:tʃər/, music /mju:zɪk/. The generalization here is that the vowel that follows a CC initial cluster, where /j/ is the second consonant, must be /u:/ (or /ʊə/, especially before /r/ in BrE, e.g., puerile /pjʊəraɪl/, cure /kjʊə/, furious /fjʊərɪəs/, mural /mjʊərəl/). In unstressed syllables, this can weaken to /ʊ/ or /ə/, e.g., regular /rɛgjʊlə, rɛgjələ/.
In AmE, /j/ does not occur in clusters after dental and alveolar sounds, e.g., enthusiasm, tune, news AmE /ɪnθu:zɪæzəm, tu:n, nu:z/, BrE /ɪnθju:zɪæzəm, tju:n, nju:z/.
Syllable-final clusters can contain up to three or even four consonants. However, the consonant phonemes that can function as the third or fourth consonant of such clusters are very limited. They are /t, d, s, z, θ/. The list is limited because very often these represent suffixes:
In short, English is a language that makes extensive use of inflexions, derivations, and contractions, many of which contribute to the size of syllable-final clusters. Syllable structure is thus connected with grammar and morphology here.
It is worthwhile remembering that languages change over time and that the syllable structure rules in this paper are those of modern-day English speakers. For example, the spelling of gnat and knight contains vestigial g and k letters, because these words used to be pronounced /gn, kn/, as some people still do with gnu (and compare with German Knecht).
The syllable structure “rules” that we have discussed above are only rules in the sense that they are generalizations about what does and does not occur in English. As we have seen, exceptions to the rules may occur, for instance, because of loanwords that have not been fully integrated.
A pertinent question is whether the syllable structure rules are better than a simple list of all the syllables that occur in English words. They are better, because they describe patterns from a phonological viewpoint.
This may be illustrated by considering the syllables /spɪə, slɪə, sθɪə, sfɪə/ (AmE /spɪr, slɪr, sθɪr, sfɪr/). We will analyse them by considering two factors: (i) whether they are regular, that is, they follow the rules and (ii) whether they are occurring, that is, they exist as or in words of English.
Onomatopoeic examples include oink and boing, in both of which the sounds represent the noise of the object (a pig and a spring). However, both break the rule examined above that long vowels (including diphthongs) do not occur before final /ŋ/. In short, there are fuzzy edges to many of the rules of English syllable structure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth century American essayist, described English as “the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven”. In other words, English has borrowed words from many languages with which it has come into contact, often through colonization.
The question in this section is, “How are loanwords treated when they are borrowed?” That is, are they integrated into the phonology of the borrowing language or are they left in the same form (phonological and/or orthographic) as in the lending language?
Some languages regularly integrate loanwords into their phonological system. This integration may take different forms:
An alternative method of dealing with clusters is for a language to simplify them by omitting one or more constituent sound. For instance, the word cent was borrowed into Malay, which does not allow final clusters, as /sen/.
English has tended not to integrate loanwords. The example of sphere was given above; when it was borrowed into English from Greek, the /sf/ initial cluster was not changed (for example, to /sp/) to conform to English syllable structure rules. However, English has integrated some loanwords. For instance, the German word Schnorchel was borrowed as the English word snorkel. Note that (i) the /ʃn/ cluster is impermissible in English words (apart from other borrowings such as the German schnapps) and has been changed to the native /sn/ cluster, (ii) the voiceless velar fricative [x] in the German pronunciation does not occur in English and is substituted by the closest native sound, the voiceless velar plosive /k/, and (iii) the spelling has been changed to reflect these changes in the pronunciation.
As was noted above, syllable structure is important not only in pronunciation teaching but also in literacy. Like literacy experts, pronunciation teachers maintain that there are several features of the syllable that need to be mastered.
Learners need to be able to say how many syllables multisyllable words contain. Several books (e.g., Gilbert 2001: 12–18) contain exercises in stating how many syllables words contain and in tapping out the syllables.
We have seen how the onset position functions somewhat independently of the rhyme (peak and coda positions). The phenomena of alliteration and rhyme relate to these two components respectively. Activities such as those in Vaughan-Rees (2010) can be used to reinforce these features. Questions such as the following can be asked: “Which word does not rhyme: spoon, book, tune?”, “Which word has a different first sound: chair, call, kick?”
In terms of literacy, the spelling of the onset is largely independent of the rhyme. Activities can be used that highlight this. For instance, learners can be asked to put the consonants /b, kl, d, g, h, dʒ, m, p, s, st, sl, θ/ before the rhyme /ʌmp/ or, in spelling terms, the letters b, cl, d, g, h, j, m, p, s, st, sl, th before ump.
Similar activities can be used for distinguishing the vowel in the peak from the consonant(s) in the coda. In short, the three positions and their constituent sounds can be worked on independently or in various combinations: “Here is a picture of a bell. Finish the word for me: /bɛ … /”, “Say spoon. Now say it again, but instead of /u:/ say /ɪ/”, “Say trip. Now say it without the /r/ sound”, “Say pink. Now say it again but do not say /p/.”
Consonant clusters are a major problem, especially for learners from languages that do not permit clusters. Various (combinations of) strategies, similar to those described above for the integration of loanwords, may be resorted to by the learner. The following examples relate to the English word street /stri:t/.
The fact should not be forgotten that words are not said in isolation, but in stretches that are linked together (see Chapter 9 on connected speech processes). Thus, if learners omit the final /k/ of link, they should be given practice in pronouncing the word with something following that begins with a vowel sound, e.g., link it, linking. The word division is largely irrelevant here; link it ends like (rhymes with) trinket.
Likewise, linked phrases can be used to combat the above learners’ strategies. In street address, the final /t/ is linked to the following vowel, avoiding deletion of the /t/ or insertion of a vowel. In this street, the fact that this ends in the same /s/ consonant as at the beginning of street allows the two /s/s to be joined, avoiding intrusive vowels.
Syllables have been shown to be an important, but often overlooked, aspect of the phonology of languages. Many of the features encountered when speakers of other languages learn English, or indeed when speakers of English learn other languages, can be simply explained in terms of the syllable structure possibilities in the two languages. These problems are especially acute for learners of English, as English has a more complex syllable structure than that of most other languages.