Blackwell Reference Online

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The role of the syllable in phonological theory has become more significant with each passing decade. All major approaches to phonology, from the early Prague School through the London prosodicists and the American structuralists to modern generative approaches including autosegmental and metrical phonology, have recognized the syllable as a fundamental unit in phonological analysis. My goal in this chapter is to illustrate the important role played by the syllable in phonological theory. I first address the importance of recognizing the syllable as a phonological constituent (section 1). I then discuss how such constituents serve to organize segments in terms of sonority (section 2). In section 3, I present arguments bearing on the nature of syllable-internal structure, including the role of sonority and syllable weight in establishing constituency. This discussion is followed in section 4 by an overview of parametric variation in syllable types of the world's languages. In section 5, I consider the status of syllabification with respect to the phonological derivation - specifically, the question of how, and at what derivational point, syllable structure is assigned to strings, and respects in which certain phonological rules can be viewed as part of the syllabification process. Finally, in section 6, I take up several problems in current syllable theory, including the nature ... log in or subscribe to read full text