Syllables SUMMARY

We looked at the syllable structure of English. First we examined the hierarchical internal structure of the unit, which has the constituents ‘onset’ and ‘rhyme’, the latter of which can be examined in its components ‘nucleus’ and ‘coda’. We also looked at the syllabification rules of the spoken and written languages, which can be very different in certain cases. In syllable phonotactics, we dealt with the sequencing restrictions in English and pointed out various onset and coda consonant cluster patterns. Finally, we looked at syllable weight, which is determined by the rhyme structure, and ambisyllabicity, whereby the same consonant behaves both as a coda of the preceding syllable and as the onset of the following syllable at the same time.