SYLLABLES AND WORD STRESS 

 THE SYLLABLE

A syllable is the next higher unit of a language after phoneme , Phonemes combine to form this next higher unit , syllable and syllables combine into the next higher unit called Words . Though It is very difficult to define the syllable , it is not so to identify syllables in a given word . While some words like " cat ' ( / kat / ) , ' bar ' ( / ba : r / ) , etc. have only one syllable , there are words which consist of two or more syllables , for example , word ' reply ' ( / rt - plan ) has two syllables and the word ' hesitate " the - zr - tent / ) has three syllables , Syllable division in a word is indicated by a hyphen between syllables . A syllable may or may not have a consonant , for example , in the word " eye ' ( / 01 / ) there is no consonant . Such syllables are called minimul syllables . On the basis of this , we can categorise syllables as follows :

 ( a ) A syllable that has an onset or a consonant at the beginning and a vowel , for example , ' see ' ( / si : / ) , ' pay ' ( / per / ) etc.

( b ) A syllable that has an ' arresting consonant Coda and no onset , for example , ' am ' ( / æm / ) . ' eat ' ( / i : t / ) etc.

( c ) A syllable which consists of both an onset and a coda , which means a consonant at beginning and a vowel at the end , for example , but ' ( / bat / ) , ' pen ' ( / pen / ) etc.

 

Division of Words into Syllables :

 It is not difficult in most of the words to point out how many syllables a given word has . For example , it is not difficult to identify the syllables in words ' rat ' ( / ræt / ) , ' redeem ' ( / n - di : m / ) , " humanist ( / hju : -ma - nist / ) , degenerate ' ( / di - d3e - no - reit / ) and electricity ' ( 1 - lek - tri - si - ti / ) . They contain one , two , three , four and five syllables respectively . It is clear from these words that the number of syllables in each corresponds to the number of vowels it contains . This rough and ready ' rule ' will apply to most of the English words .

But it may be difficult sometimes to draw the syllable boundary . In some words , some letters occur twice consecutively as in " account " , " commute ' , ' allot ' , ' communication etc. In such words , the syllable boundary is marked by putting a hyphen between the double letters .

ac - count           com - mute

al - lot com - munication

Thus we can transcribe them as

 lak - aUnt / , / al - at / , / ka - mju : t / , / ko - mju - ni - kei / n / .

However , the case with the words containing letter x is opposite . x stands for two sounds in these words such as / KS / , / gz / and / K / in ' exercise ' , ' examination and " luxury respectively . To make the syllable division clear in such words , we should first transcribe them phonetically , for example , / ek - s3 - soiz / , / ig - za - mi - nei / n / and AAK - fa - rt /.