ABSTRACT
Basic phonetic-phonological unit of the word or of speech that can be identified intuitively, but for which there is no uniform linguistic definition. Articulatory criteria include increased pressure in the airstream ( stress2), a change in the quality of individual sounds ( sonority), a change in the degree to which the mouth is opened. Regarding syllable structure, a distinction is drawn between the nucleus (= ‘crest,’ ‘peak,’ i.e. the point of greatest volume of sound which, as a rule, is formed by vowels) and the marginal phonemes of the surrounding sounds that are known as the head (=‘onset,’ i.e. the beginning of the syllable) and the coda (end of the syllable). Syllable boundaries are, in part, phonologically characterized by boundary markers. If a syllable ends in a vowel, it is an open syllable; if it ends in a consonant, a closed syllable. Sounds, or sequences of sounds that cannot be interpreted phonologically as syllabic (like [p] in supper, which is phonologically one phone, but belongs to two syllables), are known as ‘interludes.’
