English Syllable and Stress

In my paper, I will discuss the English Syllable, phoneme, ways of identifying phonemes and the application of stress in English words. The area of linguistics that puts effort into the understanding the sounds of a language is Phonetics, a sub-category of Phonetics, which deals specifically with the ways sounds are organized into the individual languages and studies the subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning, is Phonology. (Gussenhoven & Jacobs, 1998)

Phonologically talking the sounds are the phonemes. According to Rogers (2000) “phonemes can be thought of as instructions for articulating speech-sounds, and so a phoneme can be described in terms of the behavior of the vocal apparatus that occurs when a physiologically normal speaker articulates his or her particular representation of the phoneme. Thus phonemes are the phonetic alphabet of the mind. That is, phonemes are how we mentally represent speech; how we store the sounds of words in our memory. The following two tables show phonemes of Modern English, the consonants and vowels.

Table 1. Modern English Consonants

(Rogers, 2000)

 Table 2. Modern English Vowels

 (Rogers, 2000)

How do we find out how people store the sounds of words in their memories? One way is looking for minimal pairs of words. Minimal pairs are pair of words which have different meanings and which are different in only one sound. If the words differ in meaning, the words may be stored in the memory differently. The difference between words is only one sound, so this difference will be also stored in the memory. In this way, the difference in sounds is significant, and the two sounds may both be phonemes.

One example from English is:

[sɪp] and [zɪp]

“Sip” and “zip” are two different words in English. However, they are different only in their initial sound. So, the [s]/[z] difference is significant for English speakers. Therefore both [s] and [z] are stored in the memory. Thus, [s] and [z] become part of English mental alphabet.

Another way of identifying the phonemes is looking at the vowels between two consonants. One example is the case of [b_t]:

[bit] ("beat") /i/

[bɪt] ("bit") /ɪ/

[bet] ("bait") /e/

[bɛt] ("bet") /ɛ/

[bæt] ("bat") /æ/

[but] ("boot") /u/

[bot] ("boat") /o/

[bɔt] ("bought") /ɔ/ (You may have [ɑ] here.)

[bʌt] ("but") /ʌ/

As seen the vowel between the two consonants can ben distinctive semantically. They are mentally distinguishable, so they can be considered as different and distinct phonemes.

So what is a Syllable? First of all, if we have a look at the structural properties of syllable we observe that syllable consists of

·                            a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel), and

·                            the consonants that cluster around this central peak.

The preceding consonant or consonants cluster is called the “onset”. For example, the “b” in the word “bar” is the onset. The consonant or consonant cluster which is following the following the peak of sonority is called the “coda”. For example, the “rt” cluster  in the word “art” is the coda. The peak of sonority is called the “nucleus”. In the word “bar” “a” is the nucleus. The nucleus is  a vowel in most cases, although the consonants [ r ], [ l ], [ m ], [ n ], and the velar nasal (the '/h/' sound) can also be the nucleus of a syllable.

Table 3. Structural Properties of the syllable.

As seen in Table 3. English syllables require a nucleus, which is usually a vowel, and optionally onset or coda, which are usually consonants or consonant clusters. In case they have an onset, Engish Syllables may start with 1, 2 or 3 consonants. In English syllables, consonant clusters are not arbitrarily formed, their representation is as follows:

Consonant Cluster : 1) s+ (initial) p,t,k,f,m,n,w,l,y,r / s:pre-initial/others :initial 

2) s+other consonants+ (post-initials) l,r,w,j =pre-initial+initial+post-initials

In the following words, the onset is in bold; the rest underlined.

read flop strap

The consonant clusters which constutute the coda are also not arbitrarily formed, they can be described as:
”any consonant except for h,r,w,j may be final consonant. There may be 2 kinds of  Final Cluster : pre-final+final/final+post final, Pre-finals(m,n,nasal,l,s : bump,belt) / Post-finals (s, z, t, d, /q/ : bets,beds)”

Syllables of English can be “open” or “closed”, if a syllable ends with a vowel (i.e.CV, CVV) this is open syllable but if it ends with a consonant or a consonant cluster (i.e. CVC, VCC) this would be closed syllable.

So, the structural formula for the English Syllable can be drawn as:

or

(C) (C) (C)    V    (C) (C) (C) (C)

Onset         Nucleus       Coda , or

Onset + Rhyme (the rest of the syllable after the onset). Rhyme can be devided as nucleus + coda. One tree diagram exemplifying this phenomenon is :

Harley (2003) proposes thirteen rules to describe how English words are formed or framed. She describes this phenomenon through Phonotactics. She first defines phonotactics as “the rules that describe possible sequences of sounds for forming English words.” These rules are  

1)                         all phonological words must contain at least one syllable, and hence must contain at least one vowel.

2)                         Sequences of repeated consonants are not possible.

3)                         The velar nasal /ng/ never occurs in the onset of a syllable.

4)                         The glottal fricative /h/ never occurs in the coda of a syllable.

5)                         The affricates /ts/ and /dz/, and the glottal fricative /h/ do not occur in complex onsets.

6)                         The first consonant in a two-consonant onset must be an obstruent.(p,t,k, d, f, g)

7)                         The second consonant in a two-consonant onset must not be a voiced obstruent.

8)                         If the first consonant of a two-consonant onset is not an /s/, the second consonant must be a liquid or a glide – the second consonant must be /l/, /r/, /w/, or /j/

9)                         Every subsequence contained within a sequence of consonants must obey all the relevant phonotactic rules.

10)                     No glides in syllable codas.

11)                     The second consonant in a two-consonant coda cannot be /ng/, /d/, /r/, /3/.

12)                     If the second consonant in a complex coda is voiced, the first consonant in the coda must also be voiced.

13)                     When a non-alveolar nasal is in a coda together with a non-alveolar obstruent, they msut have the same place of articulation, and obstruent must be a voiceless stop.

14)                     Two obstruents in a coda together must have the same voicing.

(Harley, H. 2003)

English syllables are considered to be strong and weak, or heavy or light, the weak or light syllables are those which include schwa/i:/ı/u:/u /syllabic consonant(i.e. bottle,button). These syllables are not stressed.

Stress

Stress is defined as using more more muscular energy while articulating the words. When a word or a syllable in word is produced louder, more lenghty, with higher pitch or with more quality, it will be perceived as stressed. The prominence makes some syllables be perceived as stressed. Words including long vowels and diphthongs or ending with more than 1 consonant are stronger, heavier and stressed.

Feet or Foot is another prominent item which should be considered when stress is being discussed.  Words are made up of rhythmic units called feet and these comprise one or more syllables. Feet represent the rhythmic structure of the word. In every foot, one of the syllables is more prominent or stronger than the others and it is called the strong syllable. It is the head of the syllable. The other syllables in the foot are the weak syllables. English is a left side dominant language. It is a property of English that the leftmost branch is always associated with a full vowel. All reduced vowels will be in the nucleus of the right-handed syllables.

English Stress

English stress is dependant on origin of words and the rhythmic factors ( heavy-light syllables). Words borrowed from Latin and other donor languages are stressed differently. In the case of  Anglo-Saxon words  the first syllable of the root is stressed. For example, in the following words the stress is in the first syllable, “blossom, body, holy, never, unpack.” 

What are the ways in Determining the main stress in English? The steps to be taken in this process are, first:

1)                         remove inflectional suffixes and stress neutral suffixes,

then

2)                         if the word has two syllables, stress the first one.

The floowing words are examples for this two step process: “donkey, exit, finger, bonus.”

3)                         If the words are of three syllables or more, determine whether the penult (the next to last syllable in a word ) is heavy or light. Following are examples of heavy and light syllables.

“Recruitment, entailment, detergent, escapist (heavy)

Average, bungalow, regiment, resolute (light)”

4)                         If the penult is heavy, stress it.

A, E, I,O,U and diphtong are long vowels. Spacious, spicy, ocean, rejoice are examples for this process.

5)              If the penult is light, stress the antepenult.

As seen in “ACtivate, MULtiply, reVItalize, VACcinate.”

(English Words, 2001)

Main stress falls on the penultimate syllable if it has a long vowel or is closed by a consonant; otherwise, main stress falls on the antepenultimate (the 3rd syllable of a word counting back from the end ) syllable.

The location of the stress depends on the distribution of heavy syllables, as well as location in the word. So, English makes distinction between heavy (long vowels, more prominent) and light (short vowels) syllables. Foot with one heavy syllable is stressed, however a foot with one light syllable is not stressed. (Dresher, B. E. 1999)

The affixes which change the word stress are various, some examples are -ain(entertain),              -ee(refugee,trainee), -ese(Portugese, Japanese), -ique(unique), -ette(cigarette,laundrette),                -esque(picturesque), -ial(proverbial), -ic(climatic), -ion(perfection), -ive(reflexive), -cal (political), -ity(complexity), -aire(millionaire), -eer(mountaineer), -ian(Italian), -et(ballet),

On the other hand, there are some other affixes which don’t effect the distribution of stress, they are -able, -age, -al, -ful, -en, -ish, -ish, -like, -less, -ment, -wise, -y, -hood, -ship, -ness,        -ing, -our etc.

References:

Dresher, B. E. (1999): “Charting the Learning Path: Cues to Parameter Setting”, Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 30, Num. 1. pp:27-67. M.I.T.

Gussenhoven & Jacobs, (1998): “Understanding Phonology”, New York, Oxford University Press

Harley, H(2003) : “A Linguistic Introduction to English Words” (unpublished book)

Rogers, W.E. (2000): “English Phonemes” http://alpha.furman.edu/~wrogers/phonemes/ (Dec. 2004)

Rubba, J :“Syllable Structure in English”  http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba/phon/syllables.html#liq (Dec. 2004)

Stockwell, R & D, Minkova (2003): “English Words: History and Structure” Cambridge University Press, UK

By Tuncer Can