N. V. Tatsenko introduction to theoretical phonetics of english

Articulatorily, the syllable is the minimal articulatory unit of the utterance.
Auditorily, the syllable is the smallest unit of perception: the listener identifies the whole of the syllable and after that the sounds which it contains.
Phonologically it is a structural unit which consists of a sequence of one or some phonemes of a language in numbers and arrangements permitted by the given language. Looking at syllables from the phonological point of view is quite different. What this involves is looking at the possible combinations of English phonemes; the study of the possible phoneme combinations of a language is called phonotactics. It is simplest to start by looking at what can occur in initial position - in other words, what can occur at the beginning of the first word when we begin to speak after a pause. We find that the word can begin with a vowel, or with one, two or three consonants. No word begins with more than three consonants. In the same way, we can look at how a word ends when it is the last word spoken before a pause; it can end with a vowel, or with one, two, three or (in a small number of cases) four consonants. No current word ends with more than four consonants.
A meaningful language unit has two aspects: syllable formation and syllable division which form a dialectical unity.
Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel - consonant.
In English the syllable is formed:

1. 
   by any vowel alone or in combination with one or more consonants - not more than 3 preceding and not more than 4 following it, e.g. are [a:], we [wi:], it [it], sixths [siks9s];
   
2. 
   by a word final sonorants [n], [1], [m] immediately preceded by a consonant: e. g. rhythm ['rI9⁸m], garden ['ga:d⁸n].
   

The English sonorants [w], [j] are never syllabic as they are always syllable-initial.
Thus vowels and sonorants are syllable-forming elements and every word, phrase or sentence has as many syllables as it has syllabic elements.
Every English syllable has a center or peak - a vowel or a sonorant. What we will call a minimum syllable is a single vowel in isolation (e.g. the words 'are' [a:], 'or' [o:], 'erf [з:]. These are preceded and followed by silence. Isolated sounds such as [m], which we sometimes produce to indicate agreement, or [f], to ask for silence, must also be regarded as syllables.
The peak may be preceded by one or more non-syllabic elements which constitute the onset of the syllable, that is, instead of silence, they have one or more consonants preceding the centre of the syllable: 'bar' [ba:] ‘key’ [ki]: ‘more’ [mo:]. The peak may be followed by one or more non-syllabic elements which constitute the coda - that is, they end with one or more consonants: 'am' [sm], 'ought' [o:t], 'ease' [i:z]. Some syllables have both onset and coda: 'ran' [rsn], 'sat' [sst], 'fill [fil].
Let us now look in more detail at syllable onsets. If the first syllable of the word in question begins with a vowel (any vowel may occur, though [o] is rare) we say that this initial syllable has a zero onset. If the syllable begins with one consonant, that initial consonant may be any consonant phoneme except [g]; [3] is rare.
We now look at syllables beginning with two consonants. When we have two or more consonants together we call them a consonant cluster. Initial two-consonant clusters are of two sorts in English. One sort is composed of [s] followed by one of a small set of consonants; examples of such clusters are found in words such as 'sting' [stig], 'sway' [swei], 'smoke' [smaok]. The [s] in these clusters is called the pre-initial consonant and the other consonant ([t], [w], [m] in the above examples) - the initial consonant.
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