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THE PROGNOSTICATION OF SYLLABLE COMPONENTS IN ENGLISH ON THE BASIS OF TRADITIONAL SOUND CLUSTER

Human intercommunication is actualized in syllables. According to J. Renyon, the syllable is one or more speech sounds, forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance, which may be a word or a commonly recognixed subdivision of words.

Syllable formation in English, as in other languages, is based on the phonological opposition of vowels and consonants. Vowels are always syllabic, they occupy the central position in the syllable. Consonants are non-syllabic and marginal. The sounds /w, r, j/ despite their strong vocalic features, function as consonants, occurring only before the vowel, e.g. “winter”, “reader”, “yard”. The sounds /l, m, n/ normally function as consonants, in various sound combinations before the vowel. But in unstressed final position, when preceded by a noise consonant, they are syllabic, e.g. /petl/ “petal”, /laItn/ “lighten”.

Historically short English vowels /I, e, x, A, P, u, q/ never occur in stressed final position without the following consonant. In unstressed position the vowels /I, e/ can occur as final.

There are powerful constraints operating in all languages as to the way in which phonemes combine together in a particular language. In Russian the syllable can be generalized as (CCCC)V(CCCC) In English (CCC)V(CCCC) (cons. and vowels). Structure of the English syllable is the most general statement of the possibilities of sequence. The vowel of the syllable may be preceded by up-to-3 consonants and may be followed by up-to-4 consonants.

The vowel may occur alone (as in 'I'). It may have 1-3 consonants before it ('pie' 'spy' straw'). It may have 1-4 consonants after it ('pit' 'fact' 'stamps' 'texts')

We need to know which of the consonants can occur alone or in clusters both before and after the vowel which is the syllable's centre.

All consonants occur singly before the vowel except 1 consonant [N]. [Z] is rare in the initian position: 'genre' ['Za:nrэ]. Clusters of 2 consonants before the vowel have 1 or 2 forms: 's' +consonant (”stay”, “swim”, “sleep”) and consonant + /w/ /j/ /r/ /l/ (“twist”, “beauty”, “cream”, “plain”, etc.).

/tl/ /hr/ /sb/ and others are not found in English in initial position.

Altogether there are 289 initial consonant clusters in Russian as compared with 50 initial consonant clusters in English. On the other hand, Russian has 142 final clusters, English - 150? 130 So, the syllable is useful as the largest unit we need to consider in explaining how phonemes are permitted to combine together in a language. The structure of a syllable varies in accordance with the number and the arrangement of consonants.

Depending on the position of consonants in relation to the vowel, there are 4 types of syllables:

1. open syllables (CV), when there is no consonant after the vowel, e.g. ‘far”, “tie”, “sea”;
2. closed syllables (VC), when the vowel is followed by a consonant, e.g. “art”, “sit”;
3. covered syllables (CV/C), when the vowel is preceded by a consonant, e.g. ‘say”, “like”, “shore”.
4. uncovered syllables V/C), then there is no consonant before the vowel, e.g. “apt”, “eat”, “eight”.

The closed type of syllable as the fundamental one in English. In Russian it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation CV 'no' 'go'.