The Syllable and the Foot : Summary - Speech Resource Pages

• /iː/ in 'city', 'happy', 'very'. These are metrically weak
because in many accents (not Australian) they can be reduced
to quite a central vowel. But a clearer indication is given by
the realisation of /t/ in words like 'city': certainly in American
English, and increasingly in Australian English, it can be
produced as an alveolar flap which is voiced and unaspirated
(and weakly contacted with the roof of the mouth). And since
alveolar flaps can only ever occur in unstressed syllables in
English, the syllable in these words is likely to be metrically
weak.
• /əʉ/ in words like 'rainbow', 'shadow', 'window'. Word-
final /əʉ/ is metrically weak for the same reason as the /iː/
in words like 'city' and 'happy' above. /əʉ/ is often reduced to
a centralised monophthong and /t/ can be produced as a flap
preceding word final /əʉ/ in words like 'ditto' and 'potato' in
some accents.
• /iː/ or /ɪ/ when it precedes /ə/ in words like 'Daniel',
'pedestrian'. This is certainly metrically weak both because it
is quite short in duration, and because it can often be
produced as a glide /j/, thus, /dænjəl/ is certainly a possible
two-syllable production of this word.
• /ʉː/ or /ʊ/ when it precedes /ə/in words like 'annual'
and for the same reason as above: these vowels are very
short in duration and can even be deleted resulting in a range
of productions from three-syllable /ænjʉːəl/ to two syllable
/ænjəl/.
English words of Latin origin (and Latin and Germanic languages)
have quantity-sensitive feet. i.e. The phonemic structure of the
rhyme contributes to the determination of stress.
For English, non-final syllables with heavy rhymes prefer to be
strong.
• Non-final: the syllable is not at the end of the word
• Heavy rhyme: a VC (short vowel + consonant) or V:
(long vowel) rhyme
• Light rhyme: a V (short vowel)