Phonetics, part III: Suprasegmentals - Basesproduced.com

Syllabicity • Syllables are hard to define phonetically…• But native speakers have an intuitive sense of whatdoes and does not constitute a syllable.• Normally, syllables will have:• consonants (optionally) at beginning and end;• a vowel in the middle.• = the syllabic “peak”• However, in English, nasals (/m/, /n/) and liquids (/l/, /r/)can form the peak of a syllable.• = syllabic consonants.