N. V. Tatsenko introduction to theoretical phonetics of english

Placement of VOWELS
Placement of CONSONANTS
open: the V is at the end, such a S is articulated with the opening of the mouth by the end: e. g. they, wri-ter	covered at the beginning: the C is at the beginning of the syllable: e. g. tie
closed: which end in C, at the end of such a S the mouth is closed: e. g. hun­dred, hat	covered at the end: the C is at the end of a S: e. g. on

The presentation of a syllable structure in terms of C and V (canonical forms) gives rather numerous combinations which can be grouped into 4 structural types of syllables:

Table 7.2

1. Fully open	V are, or
2. Fully closed (V between C)	CVC 'fat' CCVC 'place' CVCC ’fact’ CCCVC ’street’ CVCCC 'facts’ CVCCCC 'sixths’ [siksGsl
3. Covered at the beginning (one C or a sequence of C precede a vowel)	CV ’too’ CCV ’spy’ CCCV 'straw'
4. Covered at the end (one C or more complete the syllable)	VC 'on' VCC 'act' VCCC 'acts’

Structurally, the most common types of the syllable in English are VC; CVC. CVs considered to be the universal structure. CV syllabic types constitute more than half of all structural types in Ukrainian.
The characteristic feature of English is monosyllabism: it contains between four and five thousand monosyllabic words. Most of the words of old English origin is of one syllable, the limit for the number of syllables in a word in English is 8, e. g. incomprehensibility.
Syllables can be also designated

1. 
   by the position in the word:
   

from the beginning - INITIAL (початковий), MEDIAL (серединний), FINAL фшальний/кшцевий) or from the end - ULTIMATE (останнш), PENULTIMATE
(передостаннш/другийвщкшця), ANTEPENULTIMATE
(третш вщкшця);

2. 
   by the position in relation to stress:
   

PRETONIC (переднаголошений), TONIC
(наголошений), POSTTONIC тслянаголошений) (any syllable which is not tonic is ATONIC/ненаголошений).
e. g. tre - men - dous
initial medial final
antepenultimate penultimate ultimate pretonic tonic posttonic
Syllabic structure of a language like its phonemic structure is patterned, which means that the sounds of language can be grouped into syllables according to certain rules. The part of phonetics that deals with this aspect of a language is called phonotactics. Phonotactic possibilities of a language determine the rules of syllable division.
Thus, each syllable contains exactly one vowel. This vowel may be preceded or followed by one or more consonants. The vowel itself may be a short vowel, a long vowel or a diphthong; or if it is the weak vowel [э], it may be combined with a nasal [n], [m] or a liquid [l] to give a syllabic consonant.

2. 
   Syllable Division
   

There are still problems with the description of the syllable: an unanswered question is how we decide on the division between syllables when we find a connected sequence of them as we usually do in normal speech. It often happens that one or more consonants from the end of one word combine with one or more at the beginning of the following word, resulting in a consonant sequence that could not occur in a single syllable. For example, 'walked through [wo:kt 9ru:] gives us the consonant sequence [kt9r].