Modelos de Regresión

Languages show considerable variation in what combinations of segments they allow as an acceptable syllable, from the highly restrictive Fijian (Fiji) or Senufo (West Africa), which require a single onset consonant followed by a single nucleus vowel, and never have coda segments, to languages such as Thargari (Western Australia), which allows a single segment in each of the three syllable positions, to rather more liberal languages like English or Polish, which allow three onset segments, long vowels or diphthongs in the nucleus and three or even four coda consonants.

Despite this variation, it is possible to make a number of cross-linguistic generalisations concerning what does or does not constitute a potential syllable in natural language; that is, to establish a typology of syllable structures.

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The most basic pattern is that exhibited by Fijian and Senufo, a single onset segment followed by a single nucleus segment, with no coda; a CV syllable. All languages have this structure as a possible syllable type (though as we have mentioned, the nucleus of a syllable is not always necessarily a vowel, making the widely-used CV notation potentially misleading).

In some languages, such as Cayuvava (Bolivia), the onset may be optional, giving two possible syllable shapes, CV and V. This is schematically represented as (C)V, where the brackets around the onset C indicate its optionality. A third possibility is that the language has the basic CV pattern, but also allows optional codas, a situation found in e.g. Thargari, allowing CV and CVC shapes, represented as CV(C). Finally, the language may allow both onsets and codas to be optional, i.e. (C)V(C), giving the syllables CV, V, CVC, VC, as in Mokilese (Micronesia). Note that certain facts emerge from this range of possibilities; i) all languages require the syllable to have a nucleus, ii) no language prohibits onsets (though they may be optional) and iii) no language requires codas (though again they may be optional). So there are no languages in which e.g. *V or *VC are the only possible syllable shapes (the asterisk * indicates an ungrammatical form); any language with V or VC syllables must also permit CV syllables.

This account of syllable patterns obviously needs to be extended somewhat, since many languages, including English, allow more than one segment to occupy syllabic positions; that is they allow complex onsets, nuclei and codas. As an example, consider English ‘grind’, which has an onset consisting of two consonants, a diphthongal nucleus and a two consonant coda. So, for each of the patterns above, there are further sub- options allowing complex onsets and/or codas, as well as the possiblity of the nucleus being a long vowel or diphthong. The number of segments allowed in the onset and/or coda may be limited to two, as for Finnish or Totonac (Mexico), or the language may allow three or more segments in these positions, as in English or Dutch.

6.2 Stress

In a sequence of syllables making up a word, one syllable is always more prominent than the others. This syllable involves more muscular effort in its production; it is louder, longer and shows more pitch variation than the surrounding syllables (on pitch, see below, Section 6.3.1). This more prominent syllable is said to bear stress. So, in ‘pa.rrot’ the first syllable is more prominent than the second, i.e. is stressed (shown in bold); the second syllable is said to be ‘unstressed’. In ‘ra.ccoon’, on the other hand, it is the last syllable which is louder and longer than the first, i.e. bears the stress.

The position of the stressed syllable is usually stated with respect to the right edge, i.e. the end, of the word, so ‘pa.rrot’ is described not as having initial stress, but rather as having penultimate stress, just as ‘ar.ma.di. llo’ does; words such as ‘e.le.phant’ and ‘a.spa.ra.gus’ are said to have antepenultimate stress. Words like ‘ra.ccoon’ and ‘ba.boon’, with stress on the last syllable, are said to have final stress.

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In longer words like ‘a.lli.ga.tor’ or ‘ar.ma.di.llo’ it is not simply a matter of one syllable being stressed and the others unstressed, as was the case with ‘pa.rrot’. If you say these longer words, it should be clear that the syllables bear different amounts or degrees of stress; in ‘a.lli.ga.tor’, while the initial syllable is clearly the most prominent, it is also the case that ‘ga’ is more prominent than ‘tor’. The same holds for ‘ar’ with respect to ‘ma’ in ‘ar.ma.di.llo’. Within a word it is useful to recognise three different degrees of stress; a syllable may bear the primary (or ‘main’) stress, it may bear

secondary stress, or it may be unstressed; so in ‘ar.ma.di.llo’, ‘di’ bears the

primary stress, ‘ar’ has secondary stress, and ‘ma’ and ‘llo’ are unstressed. In transcriptions, primary stress is indicated by a superscript  at the beginning of the relevant syllable, secondary stress by a subscript  and unstressed syllables are left unmarked; an RP transcription of ‘ar.ma.di.llo’ would thus be [

ɑmədiləυ].

This alternating pattern of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable is very common across languages.The effect is known as eurhythmy, and a crucial component of eurythmy is the foot. Just as syllables are made up of segments, so the foot is made up of syllables. The foot is a phonological structure consisting of a stressed syllable (often known as the head) plus any associated unstressed syllables, so both ‘alligator’ and ‘armadillo’ have two feet (phonologically). A foot which is made up of a stressed syllable followed by one or more unstressed ones, such as ‘wa.lla.by’, is known as a ‘left-headed foot’ or trochee. The opposite pattern, where the unstressed syllable(s) precede(s) the stressed syllable, as found in French cro.co.dile, is known as a right-headed foot or iamb. See below, and Section 10.4.3, for more discussion of feet.

To return to our discussion of stress, it should not be thought that secondary stress is only a feature of longer words in English (or other languages); consider the difference in the stress patterns of pairs of words like ‘rabbit’ and ‘rabbi’ or ‘contain’ and ‘maintain’. In the first pair, the main stress is on ‘ra’, in the second pair on ‘tain’; the difference lies in the degree of stress on the other (non main stress-bearing) syllable in each word. Compare the second syllables in the words in the first pair, ‘bbit’ versus ‘bbi’. It should be apparent that they are not equal in terms of the degree of stress they bear; ‘bbi’ is more prominent than ‘bbit’. This is because ‘bbi’ bears secondary stress, whereas ‘bbit’ is unstressed. The same is true of the syllables ‘main’ and ‘con’ in the second pair of words; ‘main’ bears secondary stress, ‘con’ is unstressed. This difference is in part the reason for the distinction in vowel quality between the non main stressed syllables in each pair; fully unstressed syllables show reduced vowels like [i] and [ə], whereas syllables with secondary stress show much less vowel reduction, here the diphthongs [ai] and [ei] respectively. In terms of foot structure, we can say that ‘rabbit’ consists of a single trochaic foot, whereas ‘rabbi’ has two feet, each comprising a single (stressed) syllable. The same is true of ‘maintain’, which also has two monosyllabic stressed feet. The case of ‘contain’ is a little more complex; it might be thought that such words comprise an iambic foot, with an unstressed syllable preceding a

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stressed one. However, English is usually considered to have only trochaic feet, meaning that if the word is produced in isolation, the ‘con’ syllable is not part of any foot (a ‘stray’ syllable), or, in the more usual case, belongs to a preceding trochaic foot, as in ‘|tins con|tain it|’, where ‘tins’ and ‘tain’ bear stress (foot boundaries are marked by | ). Note that this means that word boundaries and phonological boundaries do not necessarily occur in the same places; a single word can be part of two different feet.