Linguistics 201 Syllables Intuitively, English words break down into ...

Linguistics 201
Syllables
Intuitively, English words break down into syllables.
• taffy [tæ.fi]
• octopus [ɑk.tə.pʊs]
• understanding [ʌn.dəɹ.stæn.diŋ]
Neat fact: English speakers have strong beliefs about where to put the breaks.
• ??[tæf.i]
• ??[ɑkt.əp.ʊs]
• ??[ʌnd.əɹst.ænd.iŋ]
Neater fact: these intuitions remain even with new words, like ‘blurdiegrant’.
• [blʌɹ.di.gɹænt]
• ??[blʌɹd.ig.ɹænt]
Some Terminology
Every syllable is made up of a NUCLEUS, optionally an ONSET, and optionally a CODA.
– NUCLEUS: the vowel part that makes up the ‘core’ of the syllable.
– ONSET: the consonant or consonants that go before the nucleus.
– CODA: the consonant or consonants that go after the nucleus.
You may have noticed a fondness for tree diagrams in linguistics… we can show the onset-nucleuscoda
structure of a syllable in tree diagrams like these. The symbol σ represents a syllable.
σ
σ
O N C O N C
k æ t b l ʌ n t
σ σ
O N N C
p l aʊ ɑ ɹ t

Linguistics 201 Syllables and phonotactic constraints
The Syllabification Algorithm (first try)
1. Scan the word and find the nuclei. Every vowel/diphthong is a nucleus (N). Every syllable has one
nucleus. Draw a line from the N to the syllable level (σ).
2. Gather consonants into onsets (O). A syllable may have an onset or it may not. Attach O to σ level.
3. Gather up the remaining consonants into codas (C). A syllable may have a coda or it may not. Attach
C to σ level.
Notice that this correctly predicts which of the below syllabifications we get!
• [tæ.fi]
• ??[tæf.i]
Constraints on onsets
Some syllabifications are not just weird but completely impossible in English.
• *[ɑ.ktə.pʊs] *[ʌ.ndə.ɹstæ.ndiŋ] *[blʌ.ɹdi.gɹænt]
Intuition: there are some constraints on what can be a possible onset in English.
• We can’t say [kt], [nd], [ɹst], [ɹd] at the start of a syllable.
• Way of telling this: there are no words which start with these sequences of phones, and words
which start this way do not sound like English. (They’re not impossible in other languages:
Russian кто [kto] ‘what’; the Ndebele people inhabit Southern Africa.)
Constraints like this are called phonotactic constraints. We see similar constraints on codas, too. For
example, *[kopl] is not a possible word of English, because [pl] cannot be a coda in English. ([kopəl] is
a possible word, but splits [p] and [l] over two syllables.)
The Syllabification Algorithm (revised)
1. Scan the word and find the nuclei. Every vowel/diphthong is a nucleus (N). Every syllable has one
nucleus. Draw a line from the N to the syllable level (σ).
2. Gather as many consonants as possible given the phonotactic constraints of English into onsets (O).
A syllable may have an onset or it may not. Attach O to σ level.
3. Gather up the remaining consonants if the phonotactic onstraints of English allow it into codas (C).
A syllable may have a coda or it may not. Attach C to σ level.
b l ʌ ɹ d i g ɹ æ n t