Lecture 1 The Phonetics System of a Language

2. Peculiarities of the Syllabic Structure of English
The syllabic structure of English has certain peculiarities. They are as follows:
1. Syllabic structure in English is not only vowels, but also sonants / m, n, l / when they are preceded by a noise consonant. E.g. / teibl / “table”, / ga:dn / “garden”.
2. As to the type of sounds constituting the syllable (V, C) there exist 23 syllable structures in English. Depending on the position of vowels, which is the peak of the syllable, and that of the consonant (C), which form margins of the syllable, we distinguish the following 4 types of syllables in English.
a) Open syllables, when there is no consonant after the vocalic peak, (CV) e.g. far, sea, tie.
b) Closed syllables, when the vocalic peak is followed by a consonant, (VC) e.g. art, sit.
c) Covered syllables, (CV(c)), when the peak is preceded by a consonant, e.g. long, shore.
d) Uncovered syllables, (VC(c)), when there is no consonant before the peak, e.g. apt, eat.
The fundamental syllable type in English is closed syll., the most frequent type in English is CVC.
3. Consonant clusters are very characteristic of the syll. structure of English, 19 structures out of 23 consonant clusters.
4. English checked vowels (i.e. short vowels) occur only in a closed syll. Checked vowels are always followed by initially strong consonants. E.g. bed, Sunday, put. English free vowels (long monophthongs, diphthongs & unstressed short monophthongs) can occur both in the open & in the closed syll., bec. the end of free vowels is weaker than the beginning. E.g. car, tie, (s n) di, / dvais /.
5. The syll. boundary never occurs after checked vowel. E.g. / twen-ti /, / kwik-li /, / let /, / big /.
If a checked vowel is separated from a succeeding stressed vowel by only one consonant sound, the syll. in which such a vowel occurs is always open. E.g. / ai-di /, / ka: tu:n /, / i-rekt /.
7. When there is a cluster of consonants between 2 vowels the place of the syllabic boundary is conditioned by whether this cluster occurs word-initially or not. If it does occur at the beginning of vowels, the syllabic boundary is before it. E.g. / gri: /, / rigret/. If it doesn’t the boundary between the consonants. E.g. / dmit /, / d vais /. When two vowels are separated by more than 2 consonants as e.g. in / ekstr / the boundary may be both before / s / & / t /, bec. / str / & / tr / occur at the beginning of words.
8. The so-called triphthongs in English are disyllabic combinations. E.g. / sain- ns /, / fla - /.
9. The structure of the stressed syll. in English is different from the structure of the unstressed syllable. The main difference is in the peak. The peak of the stressed syll. is always vocalic. In the unstressed syllable the peak may be a vowel or a consonant. When the peak of the stressed syllable is checked, the syllable must be “closed” by a

consonant. The structure of the stressed syllable ((open or closed) may be presented by the following formula:

a. (C)V(C) – where V is a historically long monophthong or a diphthong & the brackets show that the consonant may be absent;
b. (C)V(C) – where V is a historically long monophthongs.
Summing up we can say that syllabic formation & syllabic division can more usefully be described with the reference to an individual language, since each particular language has its own syllabic structure.