The syllable and its internal structure

We saw in Section 10.1 with the distribution of clear and dark l that syllable structure plays a role in phonological processes. In a similar vein, consider the words ‘nightly’ and ‘nitrate’. For many speakers the /t/ in ‘nightly’ is likely to surface as [ʔ], while in ‘nitrate’ the first /t/ is aspirated [th_].

So, how do we capture this? Without reference to syllable structure we need to show that /t/ is realised as [ʔ] when it appears in two apparently distinct environments, i.e. before another consonant, as in ‘nightly’ [naiʔi], and when it appears at the end of a word, as in ‘cat’ [kʔ]. These two disparate environments can be informally stated in a rule as follows: (10.36) /t/ Æ [ʔ] / __

{

}

This rule states that /t/ becomes [ʔ] both before another consonant and at the end of a word. Note that this is exactly the environment associated with the distribution of clear and dark l. While (10.36) captures the observed behaviour of /t/, it gives us little insight into the nature of the conditioning environment, since it tells us nothing about a possible relationship between a consonant and a word boundary.

Looking at this in terms of syllable structure sheds more light on the nature of the environment. If we look at the words ‘nightly’ and ‘cat’ again and consider where the syllable boundaries fall, we find that in both cases

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/t/ is immediately before a syllable boundary, i.e. in the coda (see Sections 2.3 and 6.1).

(10.37) a. [.naiʔ.li.] b. [.kæʔ.]

These examples show that rather than referring to consonants and word boundaries the important aspect of the environment is the position of the syllable boundary: /t/ in syllable-final position is glottalised. This can be informally represented as in the rule below.

(10.38) /t/ Æ [ʔ] / __ .

If we now consider in the light of this the difference between ‘nightly’ and ‘nitrate’, where the /t/ of ‘nightly’ surfaces as [ʔ] and the first /t/ of ‘nitrate’ surfaces with aspiration as [th_{], one might suspect that there is}

some difference between the sequences /tl/ and /tɹ/ in terms of syllable boundaries and, indeed, there is. Recall from Section 6.1.4 that the position of syllable boundaries is determined in part by onset maximisation, and that this is subject to language-specific phonotactic restrictions on word initial clusters. In English, [tɹ] is a permitted initial sequence, but [tl] is not, due to a phonotactic constraint operating in English; English words cannot begin with the sequence *[tl].

What this means for ‘nightly’ and ‘nitrate’ is that a syllable boundary occurs between /t/ and /l/ in ‘nightly’, but the /t/ and /ɹ/ in ‘nitrate’ belong to the same syllable: night.ly ~ ni.trate. The /t/ in ‘nightly’ is syllable-final while the /t/ in ‘nitrate’ is not. Hence the /t/ in ‘nightly’ fits the environment for the rule in (10.38) and is thus glottalised. In ‘nitrate’ the first /t/ is syllable-initial, rather than syllable-final, and so cannot be glottalised.

Further evidence for this account comes from examples like ‘patrol’ and ‘petrol’. There are many varieties of English in which ‘petrol’ is pronounced with a glottal stop, as [ph_{εʔɹə)], while ‘patrol’ surfaces with [t}h_{] and never with}

a glottal stop as in [pəth_{ɹəυ)], where the aspiration serves to devoice the}

following liquid. This is good evidence that it’s not merely a question of whether or not the /t/ in question can be in an onset with the following consonant, but rather whether it is in the onset. As we’ve seen before, an underlying segment undergoes a particular process depending on where it is in a syllable, since in ‘pet.rol’ the /t/ is in the coda of the first syllable whereas in ‘pa.trol’ (for reasons of stress placement) the /t/ is in the onset of the second syllable.

Note that the syllable boundary suggested here for ‘petrol’, between the /t/ and /ɹ/, runs counter to the principles of boundary placement discussed in Section 6.1.4. Onset maximisation would suggest that in both words both the consonants should be in the onset of the second syllable. However, the differing behaviour of the consonant clusters in ‘petrol’ and ‘patrol’ suggests that there might be more to be said here. The fact that the /t/ in ‘patrol’ can never glottalise indicates clearly that it must be in the onset, but the case of the /t/ in ‘petrol’ is a little more complex. The fact

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that it can glottalise suggests it is in a coda, as claimed above. However, in both ‘petrol’ and ‘patrol’, the /ɹ/ devoices. This devoicing of a liquid after a voiceless stop (see Section 3.1.3) only occurs in onsets, which suggests that the /t/ in both words is in onset position. So, while the /t/ in ‘patrol’ is uncontroversially an onset consonant, the /t/ in ‘petrol’ has characteristics of both onset and coda positions. It is thus possible to consider the /t/ in ‘petrol’ to be ambisyllabic, that is simultaneously in the coda of the first syllable (hence it can glottalise) and in the onset of the second syllable (and hence it devoices the following liquid). The syllable boundaries thus overlap in the case of ‘petrol’, as [

1 pe [2 t ]1 rol ]2, with the /t/ in both

syllables. Note that only the /t/ is ambisyllabic; the /ɹ/ cannot also be simultaneously in the coda of the first syllable since /tɹ/ is not a permitted coda. That the boundaries do not overlap in ‘patrol’, [₁ pa ]

1 [2 trol ]2, has to

do with the position of the stress, as we suggested above. Only consonants following stress can be ambisyllabic; onsets of stressed syllables cannot be ambisyllabic.

The notion of ambisyllabicity also helps account for the varying behaviour of /t/ with respect to ‘flapping’ in North American Englishes (see Section 3.1.6); while the /t/ in ‘atom’ is realised as a flap, in ‘atomic’ the /t/ surfaces as aspirated. Given the different stress patterns of the two words, we can see that the /t/ in ‘atom’ follows the stress, and is thus ambisyllabic, whereas the /t/ in ‘atomic’ is in the onset of the stressed syllable, and so cannot be ambisyllabic. Given this difference, flapping can be seen as only affecting ambisyllabic stops.

As we discussed briefly in Section 6.1.2, there is more to the role played by syllables than simply the location of syllable boundaries in phonological structure. There is a certain type of speech error, usually called a spoonerism, which consists of the first segment or cluster of a syllable being swapped for the first segment or cluster of another syllable in a phrase. For example, a speaker who wants to say ‘round moon’ may mistakenly make the transformation as in (10.39).

(10.39) round moon Æ mound rune

What has happened here is that the first consonant of each word has been switched, shown schematically in (10.40).

(10.40) C₁V… C₂V… Æ C₂V… C₁V … [ɹaυnd mun] [maυnd ɹun]

A spoonerism, however, of ‘dear queen’ may end up as ‘queer dean’. (10.41) C₁V… C₂C₃V… Æ C₂C₃V… C₁V…

[diɹ kwin] [kwiɹ din]

(For non-rhotic speakers the final segment of ‘dear’/‘queer’ will be [ə].) Significantly, it doesn’t end up as *C₁C₂V… C₃V… *[dwiɹ kin], or *C1C3V…

C₂V… *[dkiɹ win] or some other combination. This indicates that it’s not simply the ‘first consonant’ or some other specific consonant that is important. Rather, it is some constituent of a syllable that is important,

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namely the onset, which we can define informally as ‘that part of the syllable that occurs before the vowel.’

Spoonerisms thus provide evidence of structure within the syllable. They show that we can manipulate parts of syllables in perfectly systematic ways. What we’ve done in the examples above is to switch onsets while leaving the remainder of the syllable – i.e. the rhyme – intact.

There are several ways of representing the internal structure of the syllable. One of the most common, repeated from Section 6.1.2, is shown in (10.42).

(10.42) σ

O R

N Co

Lower case sigma (σ) stands for ‘syllable’. The onset is represented by ‘O’. The nucleus, or core, of the syllable is represented by ‘N’. ‘Co’, or coda, is a consonant or consonants following the vowel. ‘R’ represents the rhyme, the combination of N and Co.

Returning to our spoonerism in (10.41), we can represent this in terms of syllable structure, as shown in (10.43).

(10.43) σ σ σ σ

O₁ R O₂ R Æ O₂ R O₁ R

N Co N Co N Co N Co

d i ɹ k w i n k w i ɹ d i n What we see in (10.43) is that the onsets have changed places: the first onset O₁ has traded places with the second onset O₂. In linear terms we would have to characterise this process as moving one, two or three segments before a vowel (since English allows consonants clusters of up to three members to appear word/syllable-initially as in ‘ray’, ‘pray’ and ‘spray’). In terms of syllable structure we need only say that two onsets have moved.

Recall from Section 6.1.2 that in English, onsets and codas are optional; only the nucleus is obligatory and may be considered to be the head of the syllable. By head we mean the obligatory and characterising element of a construction. Without a nucleus there is no syllable. Note also that the nucleus, typically a vowel, is the most prominent segment in the syllable in the sense that it is the most sonorant.

In terms of syllable structure, then, we start to see what processes are involved in t-glottalisation and l-velarisation: when /t/ appears in coda position it may glottalise; when /l/ appears in coda position it velarises.

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(10.44)

In the above trees, we ignore issues of ambisyllabicity for ease of exposition. Syllable structure can also give us interesting insights into phonotactics, which is the statement of permissible combinations of segments in a particular language. Consider the underlined parts of following words: (10.45) sleepwalk lab worker livewire leafworm

In linear terms these words exhibit sequences of [pw], [bw], [vw] and [fw]. At the same time, however, words such as those in (10.46) are impossible words of English:

(10.46) *pwell *bwee *vwoot *fwite

This means that we cannot simply place a restriction on sequences of [pw], [bw], [vw] and [fw], since they do occur, as in (10.45). Rather, the restriction is that sequences of a labial segment followed by [w] cannot appear in an onset or in a coda. So it is not the sequence of [pw] etc. that is not permitted, but the occurrence of such a sequence in an onset or a coda. Compare the position of the [pw] in [slipwɔk] with that in *[pwε)].

(10.47)

Although the [p] and [w] are linearly adjacent in both (10.47a) and (10.47b), they are in different syllables in (10.47a) – referred to technically as heterosyllabic – while in (10.47b) they are in the onset of the same syllable – tautosyllabic. It is this second occurrence that is ill–formed in English.

10.4.2 Mora

A rather different type of syllable-internal structure to that described above involves an element called the mora. As we saw in Section 6.2.2, in some languages (e.g. English, Latin and Arabic) stress is sensitive to syllable

weight. In other words, stress is assigned to particular syllables depending

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and no coda – or heavy – consisting of either a long vowel or diphthong in the nucleus, or having a consonant in coda position. While the light syllable seems to be rather straightforward – (C)V – the heavy syllable can consist of (C)VV, (C)VC – or even (C)VCC. Note the parentheses around the initial C. Onsets appear to be irrelevant to syllable weight. Using the syllable formalism seen above we can represent these syllables as in (10.48). (10.48)

In languages sensitive to syllable weight the syllables in (10.48b) and (10.48c) (as well as VCC) typically behave as a group. In terms of syllable structure there is no clear reason why this should be so: in (10.48b) the nucleus contains two segments; in (10.48c), the nucleus contains one segment and the coda also contains one segment. One might suggest that some notion like ‘branching rhyme’ is playing a role here but, while ‘branchingness’ may be relevant, it is the nucleus branching in one case and the rhyme in the other.

So, how can these types of syllable be formalised so that heavy syllables are distinguished from light syllables in a natural way? One way of doing this is to recognise another structural unit, the mora (represented by Greek mu, m). The mora is a unit of quantity, with a single vowel – i.e. a light syllable – equalling one m, while a long vowel and a vowel plus coda consonant – i.e. heavy syllables – each equal two ms:

(10.49)

Note that in (10.49) the onsets attach directly to the syllable node and have no bearing on moraic structure. This is in keeping with the generalisation mentioned above that onsets do not contribute to syllable weight.

Apart from structure between the segment and the syllable there remains the question of suprasyllabic structure, that is structure above the syllable. We turn to this question now.

10.4.3 Foot

Traditional studies of poetic metre have long recognised the foot as an organising structure for combining syllables, or more precisely for combining

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stressed and unstressed syllables. A stressed syllable combined with any associated unstressed syllables constitutes a foot, with the stressed syllable being the head, since it is the most prominent. Feet may be leftheaded, i.e. with the stressed syllable on the left [s´ s], or rightheaded [s s´ ], they may be

binary (bounded), consisting of two syllables, or unbounded, consisting of

all the syllables in a particular domain, for instance, a morpheme or word. A degenerate foot consists of a single syllable. Some of these structures are illustrated in (10.50).

(10.50)

Traditionally, feet like those in (10.50a) are called iambic feet or iambs, while feet like those in (10.50b) are trochaic feet or trochees. (Other sorts of feet also have traditional labels which we won’t detail here.) Note that the syllable in (10.50d) is not shown as stressed: since stress is a relative relationship, a single syllable in isolation is neither strong nor weak in relation to another one. This does not preclude a degenerate foot from having stress, as will be evident from the discussion below.

In addition to their metrical function, another reason to identify feet is to allow us to refer to the domain of specific phonological rules. Compare the words in (10.51). (Primary stress is indicated by a superscript  and secondary stress by a subscript  before the syllable.)

(10.51) [iŋk] ‘ink’ [iŋkləneiʃan] ‘inclination’ [inklain] ‘incline’ (noun) [inklain] ‘incline’ (verb) Note that in ‘ink’ and ‘inclination’ the /n/ obligatorily appears as [ŋ]. In ‘incline’ (noun or verb) the /n/ may occur as [n] (though it can appear as [ŋ] it does not have to). If we look at syllable structure alone, we find that we cannot distinguish between the occurrence of [ŋ] and [n]: leaving aside ‘ink’, the syllabification of ‘inclination’ and ‘incline’ is the same for the relevant parts of the words. The /n/s in question are syllable-final in both cases.

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At the same time, the difference in occurrence between [ŋ] and [n] cannot be due to stress alone, since the noun and verb forms of ‘incline’ differ precisely with respect to the stress assigned to the initial syllable.

What is different about the words in (10.51) though is the foot structure. Assuming that each stressed syllable (primary or secondary stress) heads its own (possibly degenerate) foot, the words in question differ in whether or not the /n/ at issue is next to the /k/ within the same foot or whether a foot boundary intervenes. When the two segments are in the same foot /n/ surfaces as [ŋ]. When the /n/ and /k/ are in different feet the /n/ may appear as [n].

(10.53)

In other words, the velar assimilation of the /n/ to the /k/ occurs obligatorily within a foot but when the /n/ and /k/ are in different feet there is no obligatory assimilation. (Unlike the obligatory assimilation, optional velar assimilation is not foot based, as it can occur across words: ‘gree[ŋ] car’.) By recognising the foot as a domain for the application of a phonological rule, we can capture the behaviour of /n/-velarisation. Without recognising the foot we have no insightful way of accounting for this.