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A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are most often
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
s). In
phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
and studies of languages, syllables are often considered the "building blocks" of words. They can influence the
rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular r ...
of a language, its prosody, its
poetic metre In poetry, metre (British English, Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American English, American spelling; see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences) is the basic rhythm, rhythmic structure of a verse (poe ...
; properties such as stress, tone and reduplication operate on syllables and their parts. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ''ignite'' is made of two syllables: ''ig'' and ''nite''. Most languages of the world use relatively simple syllable structures that often alternate between vowels and consonants. Despite being present in virtually all human languages, syllables still have no precise definition that is valid for all known languages. A common criterion for finding syllable boundaries is native speaker intuition, but individuals sometimes disagree on them. Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the
Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...
ian city of Ur. This shift from
pictogram A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...
s to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing". A word that consists of a single syllable (like English ''dog'') is called a monosyllable (and is said to be ''monosyllabic''). Similar terms include disyllable (and ''disyllabic''; also ''bisyllable'' and ''bisyllabic'') for a word of two syllables; trisyllable (and ''trisyllabic'') for a word of three syllables; and polysyllable (and ''polysyllabic''), which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one syllable.


Etymology

''Syllable'' is an Anglo-Norman variation of
Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
, from Latin , from Koine Greek">Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
, from Latin , from Koine Greek (). means "the taken together", referring to letters that are taken together to make a single sound. is a verbal noun from the verb , a compound of the preposition "with" and the verb "take". The noun uses the Proto-Indo-European root, root , which appears in the Aorist (Ancient Greek), aorist tense; the present tense stem is formed by adding a
nasal infix The nasal infix is a reconstructed nasal consonant or syllable that was inserted ( infixed) into the stem or root of a word in the Proto-Indo-European language. It has reflexes in several ancient and modern Indo-European languages. It is one o ...
' before the and a
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
at the end.


Transcription

In the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
(IPA), the fullstop marks syllable breaks, as in the word "astronomical" . In practice, however, IPA transcription is typically divided into words by spaces, and often these spaces are also understood to be syllable breaks. In addition, the stress mark is placed immediately before a stressed syllable, and when the stressed syllable is in the middle of a word, in practice, the stress mark also marks a syllable break, for example in the word "understood" (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a full stop, e.g. ). When a word space comes in the middle of a syllable (that is, when a syllable spans words), a tie bar can be used for liaison, as in the French combination . The liaison tie is also used to join lexical words into
phonological word The phonological word or prosodic word (also called pword, PrWd; symbolised as ω) is a constituent in the phonological hierarchy. It is higher than the syllable and the foot but lower than intonational phrase and the phonological phrase. It i ...
s, for example ''hot dog'' . A Greek sigma, , is used as a wild card for 'syllable', and a dollar/peso sign, , marks a syllable boundary where the usual fullstop might be misunderstood. For example, is a pair of syllables, and is a syllable-final vowel.


Components


Onset-nucleus-rime segmentation

In this framework, the general structure of a syllable (σ) consists of three segments grouped into two components: * Onset (ω): A
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
or consonant cluster, obligatory in some languages, optional or even restricted in others * Rime (ρ): Right branch, contrasts with onset, splits into nucleus and coda ** Nucleus (ν): A
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
or syllabic consonant, obligatory in most languages ** Coda (κ): A consonant or consonant cluster, optional in some languages, highly restricted or prohibited in others The syllable is usually considered right-branching, i.e. nucleus and coda are grouped together as a "rime" and are only distinguished at the second level. The ''nucleus'' is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. The ''onset'' is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the ''coda'' (literally 'tail') is the sound or sounds that follow the nucleus. They are sometimes collectively known as the ''shell''. The term ''rime'' covers the nucleus plus coda. In the one-syllable English word ''cat'', the nucleus is ''a'' (the sound that can be shouted or sung on its own), the onset ''c'', the coda ''t'', and the rime ''at''. This syllable can be abstracted as a ''consonant-vowel-consonant'' syllable, abbreviated ''CVC''. Languages vary greatly in the restrictions on the sounds making up the onset, nucleus and coda of a syllable, according to what is termed a language's
phonotactics Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek 'voice, sound' and 'having to do with arranging') is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...
. Although every syllable has supra-segmental features, these are usually ignored if not semantically relevant, e.g. in tonal languages.


Chinese segmentation

In the syllable structure of
Sinitic languages The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a p ...
, the onset is replaced with an initial, and a semivowel or liquid forms another segment, called the medial. These four segments are grouped into two slightly different components: *
Initial In a written or published work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter (books), chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin ''initiālis'', which means '' ...
: Optional onset, excluding semivowels * Final : Medial, nucleus, and final consonant ** Medial : Optional semivowel or liquid ** Nucleus : A
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
or syllabic consonant ** Coda : Optional final consonant * Tone : May be carried by the syllable as a whole or by the rime In many languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, such as Chinese, the syllable structure is expanded to include an additional, optional medial segment located between the onset (often termed the ''initial'' in this context) and the rime. The medial is normally a
semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y ...
, but reconstructions of Old Chinese generally include
liquid Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usually close to th ...
medials ( in modern reconstructions, in older versions), and many reconstructions of
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
include a medial contrast between and , where the functions phonologically as a glide rather than as part of the nucleus. In addition, many reconstructions of both Old and Middle Chinese include complex medials such as , , and . The medial groups phonologically with the rime rather than the onset, and the combination of medial and rime is collectively known as the final. Some linguists, especially when discussing the modern Chinese varieties, use the terms "final" and "rime" interchangeably. In historical Chinese phonology, however, the distinction between "final" (including the medial) and "rime" (not including the medial) is important in understanding the rime dictionaries and rime tables that form the primary sources for
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
, and as a result most authors distinguish the two according to the above definition.


Grouping of components

In some theories of phonology, syllable structures are displayed as tree diagrams (similar to the trees found in some types of syntax). Not all phonologists agree that syllables have internal structure; in fact, some phonologists doubt the existence of the syllable as a theoretical entity. There are many arguments for a hierarchical relationship, rather than a linear one, between the syllable constituents. One hierarchical model groups the syllable nucleus and coda into an intermediate level, the ''rime''. The hierarchical model accounts for the role that the ''nucleus''+''coda'' constituent plays in verse (i.e., rhyming words such as ''cat'' and ''bat'' are formed by matching both the nucleus and coda, or the entire rime), and for the distinction between heavy and light syllables, which plays a role in phonological processes such as, for example, sound change in
Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
and , where in a process called high vowel deletion (HVD), the nominative/accusative plural of single light-syllable roots (like "*scip-") got a "u" ending in OE, whereas heavy syllable roots (like "*word-") would not, giving "scip-u" but "word-∅".


Body

In some traditional descriptions of certain languages such as
Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...
and
Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...
, the syllable is considered left-branching, i.e. onset and nucleus group below a higher-level unit, called a "body" or "core". This contrasts with the coda.


Rime

The rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in most poetic rhymes, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech. The rime is usually the portion of a syllable from the first
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
to the end. For example, is the rime of all of the words ''at'', ''sat'', and ''flat''. However, the nucleus does not necessarily need to be a vowel in some languages, such as English. For instance, the rime of the second syllables of the words ''bottle'' and ''fiddle'' is just , a
liquid consonant In linguistics, a liquid consonant or simply liquid is any of a class of consonants that consists of rhotics and voiced lateral approximants, which are also sometimes described as "R-like sounds" and "L-like sounds". The word ''liquid'' seems ...
. Just as the rime branches into the nucleus and coda, the nucleus and coda may each branch into multiple
phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s. The limit for the number of phonemes which may be contained in each varies by language. For example, Japanese and most Sino-Tibetan languages do not have consonant clusters at the beginning or end of syllables, whereas many Eastern European languages can have more than two consonants at the beginning or end of the syllable. In English, the onset may have up to three consonants, and the coda four. ''Rime'' and ''rhyme'' are variants of the same word, but the rarer form ''rime'' is sometimes used to mean specifically ''syllable rime'' to differentiate it from the concept of poetic
rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final Stress (linguistics), stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciou ...
. This distinction is not made by some linguists and does not appear in most dictionaries.


Weight

A heavy syllable is generally one with a ''branching rime'', i.e. it is either a ''closed syllable'' that ends in a consonant, or a syllable with a ''branching nucleus'', i.e. a long vowel or
diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
. The name is a metaphor, based on the nucleus or coda having lines that branch in a tree diagram. In some languages, heavy syllables include both VV (branching nucleus) and VC (branching rime) syllables, contrasted with V, which is a light syllable. In other languages, only VV syllables are considered heavy, while both VC and V syllables are light. Some languages distinguish a third type of superheavy syllable, which consists of VVC syllables (with both a branching nucleus and rime) or VCC syllables (with a coda consisting of two or more consonants) or both. In moraic theory, heavy syllables are said to have two moras, while light syllables are said to have one and superheavy syllables are said to have three.
Japanese phonology Japanese phonology is the system of sounds used in the pronunciation of the Japanese language. Unless otherwise noted, this article describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo dialect. There is no overall consensus on the nu ...
is generally described this way. Many languages forbid superheavy syllables, while a significant number forbid any heavy syllable. Some languages strive for constant syllable weight; for example, in stressed, non-final syllables in Italian, short vowels co-occur with closed syllables while long vowels co-occur with open syllables, so that all such syllables are heavy (not light or superheavy). The difference between heavy and light frequently determines which syllables receive stress – this is the case in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
and
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, for example. The system of poetic meter in many classical languages, such as
Classical Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...
,
Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...
, Old Tamil and
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, is based on syllable weight rather than stress (so-called ''quantitative rhythm'' or ''quantitative meter'').


Syllabification

Syllabification is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written. In most languages, the actually spoken syllables are the basis of syllabification in writing too. Due to the very weak correspondence between sounds and letters in the spelling of modern English, for example, written syllabification in English has to be based mostly on etymological i.e. morphological instead of phonetic principles. English written syllables therefore do not correspond to the actually spoken syllables of the living language. Phonotactic rules determine which sounds are allowed or disallowed in each part of the syllable. English allows very complicated syllables; syllables may begin with up to three consonants (as in ''strength''), and occasionally end with as many as four (as in ''angsts'', pronounced �ŋsts. Many other languages are much more restricted; Japanese, for example, only allows and a
chroneme In linguistics, a chroneme is an abstract phonological suprasegmental feature used to signify contrastive differences in the length of speech sounds. Both consonants and vowels can be viewed as displaying this features. The noun ''chroneme'' is ...
in a coda, and theoretically has no consonant clusters at all, as the onset is composed of at most one consonant. The linking of a word-final consonant to a vowel beginning the word immediately following it forms a regular part of the phonetics of some languages, including Spanish, Hungarian, and Turkish. Thus, in Spanish, the phrase ('the men') is pronounced , Hungarian ('the human') as , and Turkish ('I hated it') as . In Italian, a final sound can be moved to the next syllable in enchainement, sometimes with a gemination: e.g., ('I've never had any of them') is broken into syllables as and ('I go there and she does as well') is realized as . A related phenomenon, called consonant mutation, is found in the Celtic languages like Irish and Welsh, whereby unwritten (but historical) final consonants affect the initial consonant of the following word.


Ambisyllabicity

There can be disagreement about the location of some divisions between syllables in spoken language. The problems of dealing with such cases have been most commonly discussed with relation to English. In the case of a word such as ''hurry'', the division may be or , neither of which seems a satisfactory analysis for a non-rhotic accent such as RP (British English): results in a syllable-final , which is not normally found, while gives a syllable-final short stressed vowel, which is also non-occurring. Arguments can be made in favour of one solution or the other: A general rule has been proposed that states that "Subject to certain conditions ..., consonants are syllabified with the more strongly stressed of two flanking syllables", while many other phonologists prefer to divide syllables with the consonant or consonants attached to the following syllable wherever possible. However, an alternative that has received some support is to treat an intervocalic consonant as ''ambisyllabic'', i.e. belonging both to the preceding and to the following syllable: . This is discussed in more detail in .


Onset

The onset (also known as anlaut) is the consonant sound or sounds at the beginning of a syllable, occurring before the nucleus. Most syllables have an onset. Syllables without an onset may be said to have an ''empty'' or '' zero onset'' – that is, nothing where the onset would be.


Onset cluster

Some languages restrict onsets to be only a single consonant, while others allow multiconsonant onsets according to various rules. For example, in English, onsets such as ''pr-'', ''pl-'' and ''tr-'' are possible but ''tl-'' is not, and ''sk-'' is possible but ''ks-'' is not. In Greek, however, both ''ks-'' and ''tl-'' are possible onsets, while contrarily in
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...
no multiconsonant onsets are allowed at all. Onset clusters often follow the sonority principle, that is, onsets with increasing sonority (/kl/) are usually preferred to ones with a plateau (/ll/) and even stronger preferred to decreasing sonority (/lk/); however, many languages have counterexamples to this tendency.


Null onset

Some languages forbid null onsets. In these languages, words beginning in a vowel, like the English word ''at'', are impossible. This is less strange than it may appear at first, as most such languages allow syllables to begin with a phonemic
glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
(the sound in the middle of English ''uh-oh'' or, in some dialects, the double T in ''button'', represented in the IPA as ). In English, a word that begins with a vowel may be pronounced with an epenthetic glottal stop when following a pause, though the glottal stop may not be a
phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
in the language. Few languages make a phonemic distinction between a word beginning with a vowel and a word beginning with a glottal stop followed by a vowel, since the distinction will generally only be audible following another word. However, Maltese and some Polynesian languages do make such a distinction, as in Hawaiian ('fire') and / ← ('tuna') and Maltese ←
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
and Maltese ← Arabic .
Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...
and Sephardi Hebrew may commonly ignore , and , and Arabic forbid empty onsets. The names ''Israel'', ''Abel'', ''Abraham'', ''Omar'', ''Abdullah'', and ''Iraq'' appear not to have onsets in the first syllable, but in the original Hebrew and Arabic forms they actually begin with various consonants: the semivowel in , the glottal fricative in , the glottal stop in , or the pharyngeal fricative in , , and . Conversely, the Arrernte language of central Australia may prohibit onsets altogether; if so, all syllables have the underlying shape VC(C). The difference between a syllable with a null onset and one beginning with a glottal stop is often purely a difference of phonological analysis, rather than the actual pronunciation of the syllable. In some cases, the pronunciation of a (putatively) vowel-initial word when following another word – particularly, whether or not a glottal stop is inserted – indicates whether the word should be considered to have a null onset. For example, many
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
such as Spanish never insert such a glottal stop, while English does so only some of the time, depending on factors such as conversation speed; in both cases, this suggests that the words in question are truly vowel-initial. But there are exceptions here, too. For example, standard German (excluding many southern accents) and
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
both require that a glottal stop be inserted between a word and a following, putatively vowel-initial word. Yet such words are perceived to begin with a vowel in German but a glottal stop in Arabic. The reason for this has to do with other properties of the two languages. For example, a glottal stop does not occur in other situations in German, e.g. before a consonant or at the end of word. On the other hand, in Arabic, not only does a glottal stop occur in such situations (e.g. Classical "he asked", "opinion", "light"), but it occurs in alternations that are clearly indicative of its phonemic status (cf. Classical "writer" vs. /mak "written", "eater" vs. "eaten"). In other words, while the glottal stop is predictable in German (inserted only if a stressed syllable would otherwise begin with a vowel), the same sound is a regular consonantal phoneme in Arabic. The status of this consonant in the respective writing systems corresponds to this difference: there is no reflex of the glottal stop in German orthography, but there is a letter in the Arabic alphabet ( Hamza (ء)). The writing system of a language may not correspond with the phonological analysis of the language in terms of its handling of (potentially) null onsets. For example, in some languages written in the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
, an initial glottal stop is left unwritten (see the German example); on the other hand, some languages written using non-Latin alphabets such as
abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...
s and
abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...
s have a special
zero consonant In orthography, a zero consonant, silent initial, or null-onset letter is a consonant letter that does not correspond to a consonant sound, but is required when a word or syllable starts with a vowel (i.e. has a null onset). Some abjads, abugid ...
to represent a null onset. As an example, in
Hangul The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...
, the alphabet of the
Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...
, a null onset is represented with ㅇ at the left or top section of a
grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...
, as in "station", pronounced ''yeok'', where the
diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
''yeo'' is the nucleus and ''k'' is the coda.


Nucleus

The ''nucleus'' is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. Generally, every syllable requires a nucleus (sometimes called the ''peak''), and the minimal syllable consists only of a nucleus, as in the English words "eye" or "owe". The syllable nucleus is usually a vowel, in the form of a monophthong,
diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
, or triphthong, but sometimes is a syllabic consonant. It has been suggested that if a language allows a type of consonants to occur in syllable nucleus, it will also allow all the consonant types that are higher in sonority, that is, a language with syllabic fricatives would necessarily also have syllabic nasals, and that syllabic obstruents will be much more rare than liquids; both statements have been shown to be false. In most
Germanic language The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...
s, lax vowels can occur only in closed syllables. Therefore, these vowels are also called checked vowels, as opposed to the tense vowels that are called ''free vowels'' because they can occur even in open syllables.


Consonant nucleus

Some languages allow obstruents to occur in the syllable nucleus without any intervening vowel or sonorant. The most common syllabic consonants are sonorants like , , , or , as in English ''bottle'' or in Slovak krv rv However, English allows syllabic obstruents in a few para-verbal onomatopoeic utterances such as ''shh'' (used to command silence) and ''psst'' (used to attract attention). All of these have been analyzed as phonemically syllabic. Obstruent-only syllables also occur phonetically in some prosodic situations when unstressed vowels elide between obstruents, as in ''potato'' and ''today'' , which do not change in their number of syllables despite losing a syllabic nucleus. A few languages have so-called '' syllabic fricatives'', also known as ''fricative vowels'', at the phonemic level. (In the context of Chinese phonology, the related but non-synonymous term ''apical vowel'' is commonly used.)
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...
allows such sounds in at least some of its dialects, for example the
pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
syllables ''sī shī rī'', usually pronounced , respectively. Though, like the nucleus of rhotic English ''church'', there is debate over whether these nuclei are consonants or vowels. Languages of the northwest coast of North America, including Salishan, Wakashan and Chinookan languages, allow
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
s and voiceless fricatives as syllables at the phonemic level, in even the most careful enunciation. An example is Chinook 'those two women are coming this way out of the water'. Syllabic obstruents used to be considered very rare, but surveys have shown that they are relatively common and might even be more common than syllabic
liquids Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usually close to th ...
. Other examples: ; Nuxálk (Bella Coola) : 'you spat on me' : 'he arrived' : 'he had in his possession a bunchberry plant' : 'seal blubber' In Bagemihl's survey of previous analyses, he finds that the Bella Coola word 'he arrived' would have been parsed into 0, 2, 3, 5, or 6 syllables depending on which analysis is used. One analysis would consider all vowel and consonant segments as syllable nuclei, another would consider only a small subset (
fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
s or
sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...
s) as nuclei candidates, and another would simply deny the existence of syllables completely. However, when working with recordings rather than transcriptions, the syllables can be obvious in such languages, and native speakers have strong intuitions as to what the syllables are. This type of phenomenon has also been reported in
Berber languages The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berbers, Berber communities, ...
(such as Indlawn Tashlhiyt Berber), Mon–Khmer languages (such as Semai, Temiar, Khmu) and the Ōgami dialect of Miyako, a Ryukyuan language. ; Indlawn Tashlhiyt Berber : 'you sprained it and then gave it' : 'rot' (imperf.) ; Semai : 'short, fat arms' Languages with long sequences of obstruents pose a problem to several models of the syllable.


Coda

The coda (also known as auslaut) comprises the
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus. The sequence of nucleus and coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist of only a nucleus, only an onset and a nucleus with no coda, or only a nucleus and coda with no onset. The
phonotactics Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek 'voice, sound' and 'having to do with arranging') is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...
of many languages forbid syllable codas. Examples are Swahili and Hawaiian. In others, codas are restricted to a small subset of the consonants that appear in onset position. At a phonemic level in Japanese, for example, a coda may only be a nasal (homorganic with any following consonant) or, in the middle of a word, gemination of the following consonant. (On a phonetic level, other codas occur due to elision of /i/ and /u/.) In other languages, nearly any consonant allowed as an onset is also allowed in the coda, even clusters of consonants. In English, for example, all onset consonants except are allowed as syllable codas. If the coda consists of a consonant cluster, the sonority typically decreases from first to last, as in the English word ''help''. This is called the sonority hierarchy (or sonority scale). English onset and coda clusters are therefore different. The onset in ''strengths'' does not appear as a coda in any English word. However, some clusters do occur as both onsets and codas, such as in ''stardust''. The sonority hierarchy is more strict in some languages and less strict in others.


Open and closed

A coda-less syllable of the form V, CV, CCV, etc. (V = vowel, C = consonant) is called an open syllable or free syllable, while a syllable that has a coda (VC, CVC, CVCC, etc.) is called a closed syllable or checked syllable. They have nothing to do with open and
close vowel A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately as close as possible to ...
s, but are defined according to the phoneme that ends the syllable: a vowel (open syllable) or a consonant (closed syllable). Almost all languages allow open syllables, but some, such as Hawaiian, do not have closed syllables. When a syllable is not the last syllable in a word, the nucleus normally must be followed by two consonants in order for the syllable to be closed. This is because a single following consonant is typically considered the onset of the following syllable. For example, Spanish ("to marry") is composed of an open syllable followed by a closed syllable (''ca-sar''), whereas "to get tired" is composed of two closed syllables (''can-sar''). When a geminate (double) consonant occurs, the syllable boundary occurs in the middle, e.g. Italian "cream" (''pan-na''); cf. Italian "bread" (''pa-ne''). English words may consist of a single closed syllable, with nucleus denoted by ν, and coda denoted by κ: *i''n'': ν = , κ = *cu''p'': ν = , κ = *ta''ll'': ν = , κ = *mi''lk'': ν = , κ = *ti''nts'': ν = , κ = *fi''fths'': ν = , κ = *si''xths'': ν = , κ = *twe''lfths'': ν = , κ = *stre''ngths'': ν = , κ = English words may also consist of a single open syllable, ending in a nucleus, without a coda: *''glue'', ν = *''pie'', ν = *''though'', ν = *''boy'', ν = A list of examples of syllable codas in English is found at English phonology#Coda.


Null coda

Some languages, forbid codas, so that all syllables are open. Few examples include Hawaiian from the Austronesian family, and Swahili from the Atlantic–Congo family.


Suprasegmental features

The domain of suprasegmental features is a syllable (or some larger unit), but not a specific sound. That is to say, these features may affect more than a single segment, and possibly all segments of a syllable: * Stress * Tone * * Suprasegmental palatalization Sometimes syllable length is also counted as a suprasegmental feature; for example, in some Germanic languages, long vowels may only exist with short consonants and vice versa. However, syllables can be analyzed as compositions of long and short phonemes, as in Finnish and Japanese, where consonant gemination and vowel length are independent.


Tone

In most languages, the pitch or pitch contour in which a syllable is pronounced conveys shades of meaning such as emphasis or surprise, or distinguishes a statement from a question. In tonal languages, however, the pitch affects the basic lexical meaning (e.g. "cat" vs. "dog") or grammatical meaning (e.g. past vs. present). In some languages, only the pitch itself (e.g. high vs. low) has this effect, while in others, especially East Asian languages such as Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese, the shape or contour (e.g. level vs. rising vs. falling) also needs to be distinguished.


Accent

Syllable structure often interacts with stress or pitch accent. In
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, for example, stress is regularly determined by syllable weight, a syllable counting as heavy if it has at least one of the following: * a long vowel in its nucleus * a
diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
in its nucleus * one or more codas In each case, the syllable is considered to have two morae. The first syllable of a word is the initial syllable and the last syllable is the final syllable. In languages accented on one of the last three syllables, the last syllable is called the ultima, the next-to-last is called the penult, and the third syllable from the end is called the antepenult. These terms come from Latin ' "last", ' "almost last", and ' "before almost last". In
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
, there are three accent marks (acute, circumflex, and grave), and terms were used to describe words based on the position and type of accent. Some of these terms are used in the description of other languages.


History

Guilhem Molinier, a member of the , which was the first literary academy in the world and held the Floral Games to award the best troubadour with the ''violeta d'aur'' top prize, gave a definition of the syllable in his ''
Leys d'amor Guilhem Molinier or Moulinier ( 1330–50) was a Old Occitan, medieval Occitan poet from Toulouse. His most notable work is ''Leys d'amors'' ("Laws of Love"), a treatise on rhetoric and grammar that achieved great notoriety and, beyond the Occita ...
'' (1328–1337), a book aimed at regulating then-flourishing Occitan poetry:


Crosslinguistic patterns

''CV'' is purported to be the universal syllable type that is found in all languages of the world, although two Australian languages, Arrernte and the Oykangand dialect of Kunjen, are possible exceptions. CV is the first syllable type to be acquired by children, and if a language has only one type of a syllable, it is always ''CV'' (e. g. Hawaiian and Hua). Several asymmetries in onset and coda have been identified. All languages have syllables with onsets, but about 12.6% of languages in WALS do not allow codas. The list of consonants allowed in the coda is usually smaller than the ones allowed in the onset (e. g. in Northern Germany, coda cannot have voiced consonants). All combinations of onset and nucleus are usually allowed, but the coda consonant is sometimes restricted by the nucleus. Consonant clusters are more typical in onsets than in codas.


Morphology

Complex syllables often occur as a result of morphological processes (e. g. the English word "texts" has an uncommon coda /kst-s/ after
plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...
isation). Some models of the syllable even exclude morphologically complex syllables from their analysis. At the same time, these clusters are acquired earlier by L1 speakers than the ones arising within a single morpheme, and are less reduced.


See also

* English phonology#Phonotactics. Covers syllable structure in English. *
Line (poetry) A line is a unit of writing into which a poem or play is divided: literally, a single row of text. The use of a line operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures, such as the sentenc ...
*
List of the longest English words with one syllable A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
* Minor syllable * Syllabary writing system * Syllable (computing) * Timing (linguistics) * Vocalese


References


Sources and recommended reading

* * * * * * * * {{Authority control Linguistic units Phonotactics Phonology