LINGUIST 1A03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Syllabic Consonant, Vocal Tract
2 Feb 2019
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2019 syllable has a nucleus: the peak of sonority, which is surrounded by less sonorous sounds. Vowels are the most sonorous sounds, so most syllables have a vowel as the nucleus. Glides are also fairly sonorous, but they"re too short to serve as the nucleus of a syllable. Stops are not very sonorous because they have so little airflow because the vocal tract is completely obstructed. fricatives also aren"t very sonorous because of the obstruction in the vocal tract. In the word rhythm, the second syllable is unstressed, and it"s pretty short. Most of the time, in ordinary rapid speech, that second syllable doesn"t have a vowel in it at all. articulators go right from the [ ] sound at the end of the first syllable into the [m] sound. The [m] itself becomes the nucleus of the syllable. It is said to be a syllabic consonant, and we use a special notation to transcribe it: [ m ].
