Ling170D | Intro to Linguistics with Dr. Getty | Fall 2009 Week 6 | More Phonology and Morphology
Syllable Structure & Stress In any language, strings of phonemes within words are organized into larger units: syllables. Most literate English speakers tend to have a good conceptual grasp of what syllables are: we refer to them when we play charades, compose poetry and song lyrics, and talk about language use.
STRESS
Syllables are also the basic anchoring points of stress and tone, which we define operationally as follows:
Stressed syllables:
• •
Greater air pressure coming out of the lungs, resulting in more acoustic energy Ususally higher pitch on vowels and sonorant consonants
Unstressed syllables:
• •
Lower acoustic energy, usually lower pitch Reduction of vowels o /‐mɛnt/ is realized as [mənt] or [mInt] in fundament but not fundamental o /‐ɑl/ is realized as [əl] or [l]in mentalbut not in mentality.
Among stressed syllables, many languages also have discernible degrees of stress. In English, we can distinguish between primary stress (usually an acute accent ‘/’ over the vowel) and secondary stress (usually a grave accent ‘\’ over the vowel.) .
Not all languages have systems of dominant word stress. In Japanese, for instance, some syllables are longer and have higher pitch than others based on meaning and sentence structure, but in everyday speech, there are no differences in raw acoustic energy: Megane‐o kaketa‐mama furo‐ni haite‐wa ike‐masen ‘Don’t go into the bathtub with your glasses on’ In English and many related languages – including Hindi, which is a very distant relative – unstressed syllables are ‘reduced,’ in other words shortened and with fewer available vowel contrasts. For instance, the contrast between /I/ and /ɛ/ is phonemic in English, but the two phonemes are both commonly realized as [I] in unstressed syllables: existential exist [IgzÍst] [ɛ̀gzIstɛ́nʃl ̩] Fundamental
[fə̀ndəmɛ́ntl ̩]
payment
[phejmInt]
Ling 170D | Intro to Linguistics with Dr. Getty | Fall 2009 | Week 6 part 1 | Page 1 of 4
In English, stress is heavily dependent on morphology. Certain affixes such as ‐al and –(a)tion attract stress onto preceding syllables; other affixes such as –ent (sometimes) attract stress onto pre‐preceding syllables. Also, when two stressed syllables are brought together across a word boundary, the one one the left will, if possible, retract to an earlier syllable.
Try it out:
fúndament – fùndaméntal fínance – fináncial exámine‐ exáminàtion
presíde – président precéde – précedent
revólve – revolútion cónstitùte – constítuent
buckaróo – Bùckaroo Bónzai
kangaróo – Kàngaroo Jáck
Mìssissíppi – Míssissippi Múd
English speakers have instinctive knowledge about where stress goes on novel words; the instinct is tied in interesting ways to the historical development of the English lexicon, even though most speakers know nothing about the subject. How would you pronounce these made‐up words?
fendren – potchlin – fotstrel – rendlick – fendrenhood – potchlinly – fostreler – rendlickness lollidoolipog – anilominic – fontimolin – resveratol –cellaxin – amtarin – tyleenol
The top row contains words that mimick the phonemic content of words that have been in English for centuries (which are mostly two syllables long, occasionally three) and have left‐dominant stress, while the bottom row evokes more recent words borrowed from Latin, French, and other languages. In these words, stress is located further to the right margin of the word.
SYLLABLE STRUCTURE
Most literate English speakers, even if they don’t grasp the notion of syllables, know how to divide them up, which they do when creating, say, song lyrics or sponatneous oral poetry.
Even so, there can be ambiguity, as you see in the case of mistake. Whether the /t/ is realized as an aspirated stop depends on where the syllable boundary falls. That, in turn, is influenced by people’s instinctive awareness – or lack thereof – of the morphological structure of the word.
When you make a mistake, is that a variation on the action denoted by the verb take? Or is it an independent, irreducible lexical morpheme in its own right? Speakers often have both in their heads and may switch between them unpredictably and unconsciously
Broad Phonetic Transcription
Syllabification
Illogical
[IllɑdƷIkəl]
Il
Mental
[mɛntəl]
mɛn.təl
mentality
[mɛnthælIɾi]
mɛn.t
misinform
[mIsInform]
m Is . In . f o r m
misinformation
[mIsInfərmeʃən]
m Is . In . f ə r . m e . ʃ ə n
partake
[pɑrthek]
p ɑ r . th e k
mistake
[mIstek]
m I.s t e k
. l ɑ . dƷ I . k ə l h
æ . l I.ɾ i
OR
m I s . th e k
Ling 170D | Intro to Linguistics with Dr. Getty | Fall 2009 | Week 6 part 1 | Page 2 of 4
Within syllables, there are more layers of structure. SYLLABLE
ONSET
RHYME
NUCLEUS
CODA
truth
t r
u
θ
spiked
s p
a j
k t
scratched
s k r
æ
tʃ t
pains
p
e j
n z
ɑ:
d
I
k s θ s
odd sixths
s
As the term suggests, you don’t have a syllable if you don’t have a nucleus. The nucleus contains the peak of sonoroity within a syllable, sonority being the combination of voicing and lack of obstruction of the air flow. As a cognitive reality, the onset is supported by spoonerisms, a pattern of speech errors named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, who was notoriously prone to them (source). bake a pie walk the dog stretch the rope
Æ Æ Æ
pake a bie dalk the wog retch the strope
Rhyming poetry is enough to support the Rhyme as a cognitive reality. Shakespeare Sonnet #15 When I consider every thing that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; As a separate cognitive reality, the Nucleus is supported by certain patterns of atypical literary rhyming called assonance as in this example from Public Enemy’s ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’ (source): Their pens and pads I snatch 'cause I've had it / I'm not an addict, fiending for static / I see their tape recorder and I grab it / No, you can't have it back, silly rabbit The Coda is supported by patterns in lots of languages that treat all the post‐nuclear, non‐sonorant consonants in a syllable as one unit. Ling 170D | Intro to Linguistics with Dr. Getty | Fall 2009 | Week 6 part 1 | Page 3 of 4
Many languages, including Dutch and German, disallow voiced continuant and and obstruent consonants from syllable‐final position. Here’s German: [tɑ:gə] ‘days’ [tɑ:k] ‘day’ [ʃterbən]
‘to die’
[ʃtIrp]
‘die!’
Others, such as Japanese, Italian, and Greek disallow all but a few possible syllable codas. In Japanese, only nasals and consonants that share an identical point and manner of articulation of a following onset are allowed. This emerges, for instance, when English words are borrowed into Japanese and adapted to the native phonology: girlfriend g ɑ . r Y . φ Y . r ɛ n . d o icebox
Kentucky Fried Chicken
ɑ j . s Y . b o . k Y . s Y
k e n . t ɑ . k i . f Y . r ɑ j . d o . tʃ i . k i ̃
Modern Greek disallows all syllable codas except for those ending in /s/ or /n/. In English, as in the vast majority of languages, a syllable nucleus has to be something sonorant: An approximant: fur A simple vowel: paw A vowel‐glide pair pay In unstressed syllables only, a nasal or a lateral approximant: table, ridden Other languages do things differently: In Czech, Slovak, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, approximants can be the nuclei of stressed syllables, as in the famous Czech sentence Prst strc krz krk ‘Stick a finger through a throat.’ Some dialects of Berber (Northern Africa) and Bella Coola, an indigenous language of the Pacific Northwest, allow fricatives to be syllabic nuclei. ONSET MAXIMIZATION When a bunch of consonants occur between two nuclei within a single word, most languages associate as many of them as possible with the onset of the second nucleus. In English, aspiration is a good cue as to when this is and is not happening: voiceless stops are aspirated only at the beginning of a stressed syllable (whether primary or secondary stress). Realization with Word Syllable Structure Illicit Syllable Structures constant [ k ɑ n . s t ə n t ] *[ k ɑ n s . th ə n t ] *[ k ɑ . n s t ə n t ] *[ k ɑ n s t . ə n t ] astray
[ ə . s t r e j ]
* [ ə s . th r e j ] *[ ə s t . r e j ] *[ ə s t r . e j ]
askew
[ ə . s k j u w ]
* [ ə s . kh j u w ] *[ ə s k . j u w ] *[ ə s k j . u w ]
Ling 170D | Intro to Linguistics with Dr. Getty | Fall 2009 | Week 6 part 1 | Page 4 of 4