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Summary

In this lesson, there was discussion of the timing units of language that are known as syllables.

To begin with, there was discussion of the evidence supporting their existence as phonological entities. The following are the types of evidence discussed:

• Syllables are countable
• There are writing systems that are arguably based on the concept of the syllable
• The concept of the syllable allows for an elegant explanation for limitations on consonant clusters in English

There was also discussion of the different parts of the syllable: onset, nucleus, coda. These parts are schematized below:

Finally, this lesson provided instruction on the syllabification of words in English. The basic process is as follows:

• find a nucleus for each syllable in the word
• give every syllable an onset, and fill up the onset position with as many consonants as are allowed in the syllable structure
• associate any remaining consonants to the coda position of the syllable.

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Phonology

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