Syllable Structure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura J. Downing ◽  
Al Mtenje
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Hiatus Resolution ◽  
Vowel Deletion ◽  
Resolution Strategies

The chapter begins with an overview of possible syllable types in Chichewa. Possible consonant sequences and issues relating to their syllabification are taken up next. Epenthesis strategies for adapting loanwords from languages which allow a wider variety of consonant cluster types are discussed in detail. Processes of vowel deletion and syllable reduction which create syllabic nasals conclude the discussion of the syllabification of consonant sequences. Vowel sequences are also limited in Chichewa. Morphologically conditioned vowel hiatus resolution strategies are illustrated in detail.

Duration of syllable nuclei in Spanish

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-280
Author(s):  
Alexander C. Aldrich ◽  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Articulatory Phonology ◽  
Using Data

AbstractIn many languages, vowel duration is modulated by syllable structure — a phenomenon known asvowel compression— so that vowels are shorter in syllables with more segments than in syllables with fewer segments. Most instrumental evidence to date has reported an effect, in many languages, of the presence (and complexity) of a coda, and some studies have also documented effects of the presence (and complexity) of an onset. However, no prior studies on Spanish vowel duration have captured any effects of syllable structure. Using data from nine speakers and controlled speech materials, the present study addresses the following research question: Does syllable structure modulate vowel duration? The findings are as follows: (a) Relative to simplex onsets (those with a singleton consonant), complex onsets (those with a consonant cluster) trigger vowel compression; and (b) neither simplex nor complex codas consistently drive vowel compression — i.e. codas do not systematically affect vowel duration. Together with the facts for other languages, our findings support a view according to which syllable structure — in particular,onsetcomplexity — modulates acoustic vowel duration. The study discusses the theoretical implications of this finding, which are argued to be in line with some of the principles of the Articulatory Phonology framework or, alternatively, suggest that codas should not be considered part of the articulatory syllable.

Foot and Syllable Structure in Modern Icelandic

1989 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory K. Iverson ◽  
Courtenay A. Kesterson
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Foot Structure

As is well known, vowel length in Modern Icelandic is in general predictable on the basis of syllable structure such that, in polysyllabic words, stressed vowels in open syllables are long, other vowels are short; in stressed monosyllables, however, vowels are long whether the syllable is open or closed by a single consonant, and short only when the syllable is closed by a consonant cluster. In contrast to the ‘final maximalistic’ strategy of Árnason (1980) and other unlikely syllabification schemes designed to unify these two patterns, we invoke Giegerich's (1985) characterization of foot structure as applied to German and English, according to which stressed monosyllables categorize metrically as disyllabic feet whose rightmost member is null. Thus, CVC structures are metrically /CV.CØ/, with the result that the generalization regarding vowel length in words of all types is simply that stressed vowels in open syllables are long, others short.

scholarly journals Phonological Constraints on the Utterance of L2 Clusters by Saudi ESL Learners

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-559
Author(s):  
Abdullah N. Alotaibi
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Arabic And English ◽  
Esl Learners ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Phonological System

The field of L2 phonology did not receive much research compared to the other linguistic domains. To add to the field and expand the current literature, the present paper’s goal was to examine the impact of syllable structure differences between Arabic and English in uttering L2 English consonant clusters. The following research question was aimed to be answered: Do the differences between two languages’ syllable structure cause production difficulties in the consonant cluster to Saudi Arabian learners of English? The subjects of this investigation were L2 English learners from Saudi with intermediate proficiency levels in English. Applying the descriptive correlational type of research model, the results showed that learners’ production is mainly influenced by their native language-specific phonological features. The learners’ production of targeted L2 consonant clusters seemed to mirror their underlying phonological system, and syllables structures were modified to match their native Arabic phonological system as a result of language transfer. These findings should be taken into account by L2 speech educators as such speech difficulty is anticipated.

scholarly journals Glide Insertion And Dialectal Variation In Kurdish

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 289
Author(s):  
Aveen Mohammed Hasan ◽  
Rebeen Abdulrahman Rasheed
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Dialectal Variation ◽  
Hiatus Resolution ◽  
Vowel Deletion

One of the strategies used as a hiatus resolution is glide insertion. Previous Kurdish phonological works involve only a description of glide insertion in one dialect neglecting the segmental context. This study provides an analysis of glide insertion in word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish and it is the first attempt to analyse the effects of dialect and segmental context. The speech material includes a set of words consisting of a stem plus a suffix with different vowel sequences at their boundaries. It is produced by four native speakers from four Kurdish speaking areas. The data analysis involves word transcription, their segmentation and the comparison of vowel sequences within and across the subdialects. The results indicate that glide insertion is not the only strategy used as word medial hiatus resolution, but it depends on the segmental context and dialect. Generally, the vowel hiatus is resolved by /j/ insertion. Vowel deletion is also used obligatorily in some segmental contexts when the second vowel in a sequence is /i/ and also when there are identical vowels in a sequences. Dialectal variations are observed in some vowel sequences in which /j/ insertion and vowel deletion both are used and when the first vowels in the sequence are the high back vowels in that /j/ and /w/ insertions are used. The findings suggests that /j/ insertion is the default strategy to resolve word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish, the insertion of /w/ or vowel deletion are other strategies which are limited to some dialects and vowel sequences.

scholarly journals The Syllable Structure of Tiv

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Elizabeth U. ◽  
Francis I.A.
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Intuitive Knowledge ◽  
Cross River ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Analytical Research

Linguistic studies reveal that every language has a particular way of combining its sounds to form words or parts of words called syllables. The paper looks at the syllable structure of the Tiv language, one of the Bantoid languages spoken mostly in the Middle Belt area of Nigeria, especially in Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Nasarawa and Cross River states of Nigeria. The objective of the study is to investigate the internal structure of syllables in the Tiv language in order to establish the regularities and restrictions inherent in the language. The study, therefore, aims at ascertaining the syllable patterns that are found in Tiv. This study adopts qualitative and analytical research design using the C V tier model of the phonological theory of syllable analysis as proposed by McCarthy (1979) and adopted by Clements and Keyser (1983), to explicate the permissible patterns of syllable structures in Tiv. Data for the study were gathered from native speakers of Tiv, whose language has not been corrupted by urbanisation and the researchers' intuitive knowledge of the Tiv language. It was found out in the study that, some of the permissible syllable structures in Tiv language include vowels and consonants like v, cv, ccv, cccv, cvc. It was also discovered that all the five vowels of the English alphabets may begin or end a syllable in the Tiv language. As found in English and other languages where the sequential occurrence of two or more consonants is termed consonant cluster, the Tiv syllable structure permits two or more consonants at the initial or final positions of the syllable which could occur as onset or coda, but they are not regarded as consonant clusters. They are regarded as co-articulations. The study concludes that Tiv language has a wide range of phonotactic constraints which if studied can contribute to the development of Tiv language.

scholarly journals SYLLABLE STRUCTURE OF WORDS IN THE SPEECH OF 3-YEAR-OLDS

2017 ◽  
pp. 124-135
Author(s):  
Tatiana V. Shuiskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Speech Development ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Structure Changes ◽  
Consonant Cluster Reduction ◽  
Cluster Reduction ◽  
The Way

The way children acquire syllable structure of words characterizes the level of their speech development. It is assumed that 3=year=olds without any disorders do not have any difficulties with constructing syllables. The current paper describes the results of an acoustic study of word syllable structure in the speech of twenty Russian 3=year=old subjects. 75% of them demonstrated from 3 to 7 syllable structure changes. The maximum of 13,2% of the total of 53 words were characterized by those changes. There were examples of word-initial single-consonant elision, syllable elision, syllable transposition, sounds transposition, insertions of hard and soft forelingual /l/ and /lʲ/ into a syllable, and anticipation. Consonant cluster reduction was also noticed; it did not change the number of syllables in words. Clusters that were more and less resistant to reduction were determined.

scholarly journals An Optimality Analysis of Hiatus Resolution Strategies in Olusuba

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ochieng Sande ◽  
Dr. Emily Ayieta Ondondo ◽  
Prof. Francis Owino Rew
Keyword(s):  
Hiatus Resolution ◽  
Resolution Strategies

scholarly journals Phonotactics as phonology: knowledge of a complex restriction in Dutch

Phonology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Kager ◽  
Joe Pater
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Maximum Entropy ◽  
Implicit Knowledge ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Maximum Entropy Model ◽  
Entropy Model

The Dutch lexicon contains very few sequences of a long vowel followed by a consonant cluster whose second member is a non-coronal. We provide experimental evidence that Dutch speakers have implicit knowledge of this gap, which cannot be reduced to the probability of segmental sequences or to word-likeness as measured by neighbourhood density. The experiment also suggests that the ill-formedness of this sequence is mediated by syllable structure: it has a weaker effect on speakers' judgements when the last consonant begins a new syllable. We provide an account in terms of Hayes & Wilson's (2008) maximum entropy model of phonotactics, using constraints that go beyond the complexity permitted by their model of constraint induction.

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