Syllable

A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a [|nucleus] with optional sounds before or after that nucleus. In phonology and studies of languages, syllables are often considered the "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language: its prosody or poetic metre. Properties such as stress, tone, and reduplication operate on syllables and their parts. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ignite is made of two syllables: ig and nite. Most languages of the world use relatively simple syllable structures that often alternate between vowels and consonants.
Despite being present in virtually all human languages, syllables still have no precise definition that is valid for all known languages. A common criterion for finding syllable boundaries is native-speaker intuition, but individuals sometimes disagree on them.
Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first instances of alphabetic writing. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing".
A word that consists of a single syllable is called a monosyllable. Similar terms include disyllable for a word of two syllables; trisyllable for a word of three syllables; and polysyllable, which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one syllable.

Etymology

Syllable is an Anglo-Norman variation of Old French sillabe, from Latin syllaba, from Koine Greek συλλαβή syllabḗ. συλλαβή means "the taken together", referring to letters that are taken together to make a single sound.
συλλαβή is a verbal noun from the verb συλλαμβάνω syllambánō, a compound of the preposition σύν sýn "with" and the verb λαμβάνω lambánō "take". The noun uses the root λαβ-, which appears in the aorist tense; the present tense stem λαμβάν- is formed by adding a nasal infix before the β b and a suffix -αν -an at the end.

Transcription

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the fullstop marks syllable breaks, as in the word "astronomical".
In practice, however, IPA transcription is typically divided into words by spaces, and often these spaces are also understood to be syllable breaks. In addition, the stress mark is placed immediately before a stressed syllable, and when the stressed syllable is in the middle of a word, in practice, the stress mark also marks a syllable break, for example in the word "understood" .
When a word space comes in the middle of a syllable, a tie bar can be used for liaison, as in the French combination les amis. The liaison tie is also used to join lexical words into phonological words, for example hot dog.
A Greek sigma,, is used as a wild card for 'syllable', and a dollar/peso sign,, marks a syllable boundary where the usual fullstop might be misunderstood. For example, is a pair of syllables, and is a syllable-final vowel.

Components

Onset–nucleus–rime segmentation

In this framework, the general structure of a syllable consists of three segments grouped into two components:

[|Onset] : A consonant or consonant cluster, obligatory in some languages, optional or even restricted in others
[|Rime] : Right branch, contrasts with onset, splits into nucleus and [|coda]
* [|Nucleus] : A vowel or syllabic consonant, obligatory in most languages
* [|Coda] : A consonant or consonant cluster, optional in some languages, highly restricted or prohibited in others

The syllable is usually considered right-branching, i.e. nucleus and coda are grouped together as a "rime" and are only distinguished at the second level.
The sounds occupying these positions may also be denoted with the following notation:

possibly with the following notation to indicate occurrence count:

"Exactly one"
"Zero or one"
"Zero or more"
"One or more"

The nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. The onset is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the coda is the sound or sounds that follow the nucleus. They are sometimes collectively known as the shell. The term rime covers the nucleus plus coda. In the one-syllable English word cat, the nucleus is a, the onset c, the coda t, and the rime at. This syllable can be abstracted as a consonant-vowel-consonant syllable, abbreviated CVC. Languages vary greatly in the restrictions on the sounds making up the onset, nucleus and coda of a syllable, according to what is termed a language's phonotactics.
Although every syllable has supra-segmental features, these are usually ignored if not semantically relevant, e.g. in tonal languages.

Chinese segmentation

In the syllable structure of Sinitic languages, the onset is replaced with an initial, and a semivowel or liquid forms another segment, called the medial. These four segments are grouped into two slightly different components:

Initial : Optional onset, excluding semivowels
[|Final] : [|Medial], nucleus, and final consonant
* Medial : Optional semivowel or liquid
* Nucleus : A vowel or syllabic consonant
* Coda : Optional final consonant
Tone : May be carried by the syllable as a whole or by the rime

In many languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, such as Chinese, the syllable structure is expanded to include an additional, optional medial segment located between the onset and the rime. The medial is normally a semivowel, but reconstructions of Old Chinese generally include liquid medials, and many reconstructions of Middle Chinese include a medial contrast between and, where the functions phonologically as a glide rather than as part of the nucleus. In addition, many reconstructions of both Old and Middle Chinese include complex medials such as,, and. The medial groups phonologically with the rime rather than the onset, and the combination of medial and rime is collectively known as the final.
Some linguists, especially when discussing the modern Chinese varieties, use the terms "final" and "rime" interchangeably. In historical Chinese phonology, however, the distinction between "final" and "rime" is important in understanding the rime dictionaries and rime tables that form the primary sources for Middle Chinese, and as a result most authors distinguish the two according to the above definition.

Grouping of components

In some theories of phonology, syllable structures are displayed as tree diagrams. Not all phonologists agree that syllables have internal structure; in fact, some phonologists doubt the existence of the syllable as a theoretical entity.
There are many arguments for a hierarchical relationship, rather than a linear one, between the syllable constituents. One hierarchical model groups the syllable nucleus and coda into an intermediate level, the rime. The hierarchical model accounts for the role that the nucleus+''coda'' constituent plays in verse, and for the distinction between heavy and light syllables, which plays a role in phonological processes such as, for example, sound change in Old English scipu and wordu, where in a process called high vowel deletion, the nominative/accusative plural of single light-syllable roots got a "u" ending in OE, whereas heavy syllable roots would not, giving "scip-u" but "word-∅".

Body

In some traditional descriptions of certain languages such as Cree and Ojibwe, the syllable is considered left-branching, i.e. onset and nucleus group below a higher-level unit, called a "body" or "core". This contrasts with the coda.

Rime

The rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in most poetic rhymes, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech.
The rime is usually the portion of a syllable from the first vowel to the end. For example, is the rime of all of the words at, sat, and flat. However, the nucleus does not necessarily need to be a vowel in some languages, such as English. For instance, the rime of the second syllables of the words bottle and fiddle is just, a liquid consonant.
Just as the rime branches into the nucleus and coda, the nucleus and coda may each branch into multiple phonemes. The limit for the number of phonemes which may be contained in each varies by language. For example, Japanese and most Sino-Tibetan languages do not have consonant clusters at the beginning or end of syllables, whereas many Eastern European languages can have more than two consonants at the beginning or end of the syllable. In English, the onset may have up to three consonants, and the coda four.
Rime and rhyme are variants of the same word, but the rarer form rime is sometimes used to mean specifically syllable rime to differentiate it from the concept of poetic rhyme. This distinction is not made by some linguists and does not appear in most dictionaries.

structure:	syllable =	onset	+ rhyme
C⁺V⁺C*:	C₁V₁ =	C₁	+ V₁
V⁺C*:	V₁ =	∅	+ V₁