Monosyllable

“ Since it is formed by both palates and the tongue, as in all, battle, blow, evil, it is classed with the palatals. At the end of a monosyllable containing a single vowel, l is often doubled, as in fall, though not after diphthongs, as foul, or digraphs, as foal. When a word ends in le, e is silent and l is preceded by a glide, as in able. ”

“ The frequency of monosyllabic lines in English poetry will hardly be wondered at, however it may be open to such criticisms as Pope's and Churchill's, when it is noted that our language contains, of monosyllables formed by the vowel a alone, considerably more than 500 ”

“ Our usual prosodies maintain that a long syllable is equal, in its time, to two short ones; this, however, is but an approach to the truth. It should be here observed that the quantity of an English syllable has no dependence upon the sound of its vowel or dipthong [diphthong] , but [depends] chiefly upon accentuation. Monosyllables are exceedingly variable, and, for the most part, may be either long or short, to suit the demand of the rhythm. In polysyllables, the accented ones [say, syllables] are always long, while those which immediately precede or succeed them, are always short. ”

“ It is not uncommon for a rustic to pass the time of day with a friend met on the road by the use of a single monosyllable. All forms of salutation, from the single monosyllable to the interchange of a few remarks, may be termed passing the time o’day. This expression is current in practically all the dialects of England, e.g. ”

“ Originally Siamese was purely monosyllabic, that is, each true word consisted of a single vowel sound preceded by, or followed by, a consonant. Of such monosyllables there are less than two thousand, and therefore many syllables have to do duty for the expression of more than one idea, confusion being avoided by the tone in which they are spoken, whence the term "tonal," which is applied to all the languages of this family. The language now consists of about 15,000 words, of which compounds of two monosyllabic words and appropriations from foreign sources form a very large part. ”

“ One may fancy him possessed of more than ordinary susceptibility of ear; but for the irritability of yours, I cannot so satisfactorily account. I could heap authority on authority for using two very short syllables in blank verse instead of one—they take up only the time of one. [144] 'Spirit' in particular is repeatedly placed as a monosyllable in Milton; and some of his ass-editors have attempted to print it as one, not feeling that the rapid pronunciation of the two syllables does not lengthen the verse more than the dilated sound of one. ”

“ All of these unaccented syllables are reckoned together as one thesis, as against the accented syllable or arsis. The single components of such a longer thesis may exhibit a certain gradation of force when compared with one another, but this degree of force must never equal the force with which the arsis is pronounced, though we sometimes find that, owing to the varying character of the syntactical or sentence accent, a monosyllable which in one case stands in the thesis, may in another connexion bear the secondary or even the primary accent. ”

“ He found that sixty monosyllables could be so combined as to represent every word in the Cherokee language, and for each of these syllables he formed a character. Many of these characters were taken from an English spelling book which he managed to get hold of. Some are Greek characters, and others are letters of the English alphabet turned upside down; but each character in the Cherokee alphabet stands for a monosyllable. ”

“ At the end of an independent monosyllable, it fell in some dialects and in others became n (cf. § 65, N) : jam > ia, rĕm > rẹ rẹn (Marcabru uses rẹy for the rhyme) , sŭm (verb) > sọ sọn. At the end of proclitics, m was probably kept at first before vowels and labials, while it became n before dentals, ŋ before gutturals, and disappeared before spirants; but the n forms (helped by the analogy of en, non) and those without a final consonant replaced m before vowels and partly before labials, and probably took the place of ŋ before gutturals ”

“ But before showing systematically these variations of the particles, we most apprise the student that for the sake of euphony a vowel will sometimes be placed between the noun and the particle, so that the noun will receive the addition of one or more syllables. The foreigner will often be surprised to find a noun thus changed from a monosyllable to a word of three, four, or five syllables, and will find it difficult to discover the accented syllable of such a word. ”

“ OBS.—In all our pronunciation, except that of the solemn style, such verbal or participial terminations as can be so uttered, are usually sunk by synæresis into mere modifications of preceding syllables. The terminational consonants, if not uttered with one vowel, must be uttered with an other. When, therefore, a vowel is entirely suppressed in pronunciation, (whether retained in writing or not,) the consonants connected with it, necessarily fall into an other syllable: thus, tried, triest, sued, suest, loved, lovest, mov'd, mov'st, are monosyllables ”

“ Nor are silent and monosyllabic persons responsible for them; gossipy individuals seek, by the use of them, to exhibit a certain power of speech. Nor is it indifferent to expression when people in an apparently nowise comfortable fashion give approximate circumlocutive figures, e.g., half-a-dozen, four syllables, instead of the monosyllable six ”

“ In a disyllabic proclitic a final short vowel might disappear in the Brit. period; thus Ar. *mene ‘my’ > *men, and caused the nasal mutation, § 107 ii, iv.
iii. (1) The final consonant of a monosyllabic proclitic was lost in W.; thus Brit. *men ‘my’ gave W. fy ‘my’; but not till after it had mutated the following initial (in this case causing the nasal mutation of mediae § 107 iv) .
(2) But the consonantal ending of an accented monosyllable was in general retained; thus W. chw̯ech ‘six’ < Kelt. *su̯eks (but chwe before a noun) ; W. nos ‘night’ < Brit. *noss < *nots < *noqu̯ts § 96 ii (5) ”

“ In words of several syllables, the last syllable but one is called the penult or penultima (sc. syllaba) , and the last but two, the antepenult or antepenultima.
The place of the accent is determined by the following laws:—
Monosyllables have the circumflex, when their vowel is long by nature, and the acute, when their vowel is short by nature or long by position, as flôs, spês, môns, fôns, but árs, dúx, fáx, párs. In words of two syllables the accent is always on the penult, and it is a) circumflex, when the penult is long by nature and the last syllable short, as jûris, lûce, mûsă, spînă ”

“ Monosyllables ending in a diphthong seldom suffer elision before a short vowel.
2486. Diphthongs arising from Synizesis (2499) are sometimes elided in early Latin verse, but not in verse of the classical period.
2487. The monosyllables quī (plural) , dō, stō, rē, spē, are thought never to suffer elision before a short vowel.
2488. The dactylic poets very rarely elide the final syllable of an iambic (⏑ –) or Cretic (– ⏑ –) word before a short vowel.
2489. Elision seldom occurs if the syllable to be elided is immediately preceded by a vowel: as in de (am) et. ”

“ In the Participles the stem ends in ντ in the act. forms, (except the Perf. act. and mid., which have ότ;) the rest take μεν, (Perf. pass, μέν.) These latter are [masc. and neut.] of the second declension, the others of the third.
§ 56. Verbs in μι insert σ before the final ι of the 3d pers. sing. Pres. Indic. act., and vary in a few other terminations, chiefly by contraction.
LESSON V. VERBS--Continued.
§ 57. The root of every primitive verb is a monosyllable, consisting of a short vowel (α, ε, ι, ο, or υ) between two (usually simple) consonants. ”

“ For O.Ir. initial i before a non-palatal consonant see § 58.
§ 98. When in a stressed syllable the consonant following the vowel is palatal but the initial consonant is not, the palatalisation in the majority of cases has affected the vowel which usually appears as ï, for exceptions see § 24. We find ï notably in the inflected forms of monosyllables containing a, o, u, e.g.
a – glαs, ‘green’, compar. glïʃə; kαm, ‘bent’, compar. kïmʹə; klαN, ‘children’, dat. klïNʹ. o – bo:r, ‘deaf’, compar. bïvrʹə; ko̤m, ‘waist’, gen. sing. kïmʹ; tro̤m, ‘heavy’, compar. trïmʹə; sɔk, ‘snout’, gen. sing. ”

“ Fig. 153.
Dividing Monosyllables.—In simple writing—the beauty of which depends on freedom rather than on precision—I think that even such an awkward word as “through” should not be broken. If the space at the end of a line is insufficient, it should be left blank, or be filled in with a dash of the pen. But in the case of words in LARGE CAPITALS, especially in title-pages and the like, where spacing [p259] is more difficult, and smooth reading less essential, any word may be divided at any point if the necessity is sufficiently obvious. ”

“ Ours are extremely ill qualified for this service, because they superabound in short syllables. Secondly, the bulk of our monosyllables are arbitrary with regard to length, which is an unlucky circumstance in Hexameter. Custom, as observed above, may render familiar a long or short pronunciation of the same word: but the mind wavering betwixt the two sounds, cannot be so much arrested with either, as with a word that hath always the same sound; and for that reason, arbitrary sounds are ill fitted for a melody which is chiefly supported{447} by quantity. ”

“ On the whole, I certainly think this measure answers sufficiently well to the Latin Sapphic; but I have felt its brevity painfully in almost every Ode that I have attempted, being constantly obliged to omit some part of the Latin which I would gladly have preserved. The great number of monosyllables in English is of course a reason for acquiescing in lines shorter than the corresponding lines in Latin; but even in English polysyllables are often necessary, and still oftener desirable on grounds of harmony ”

“ And now for our Monosyllables. In the Controversy concerning which, it must be examined, first whether the Charge which is exhibited against the Northern Languages is true, that they consist of nothing but Monosyllables; and secondly, whether or no the Copiousness and Variety of Monosyllables may be always justly reputed a fault, and may not sometimes as justly be thought, to be very useful and ornamental. ”

“ When we come to deal with roots, we shall see good reason for believing that they were all or for the most part once dissyllabic, and the tendency that many children show to turn the monosyllables of modern English into dissyllabic words may be but an instinctive reversion to the early type of speech. ”

“ To begin with, the child is unable to master long sequences of syllables; he prefers monosyllables and often emits them singly and separated by pauses. Even in words that to us are inseparable wholes some children will make breaks between syllables, e.g. ”

“ Final consonants are seldom or never given, and the vocabulary is essentially monosyllabic, the only exceptions being in the nature of proper names ("baby,"; ná-ni, ná-ná) , and even these are reduplicated monosyllables rather than dissyllables proper. She once said "lady" pretty well, but did not take it into use. No construction is yet attempted ”

“ Thus, many monosyllables have no genitive plural: as, aes, copper, cor, heart, cōs, whetstone, dōs, dowry, ōs, face, pāx, peace, pix, pitch, rōs, dew, sāl, salt, lūx, light; many words have no genitive, dative, or ablative plural: as, hiemps, winter ”

“ Except perhaps monosyllables which never form their nominative plural in a, nor their dative plural in ibh; as, damh m. an ox, n. p. daimh, v. p. dhaimh; a shloigh, Rom. xv. 11.
The irregular noun Bean f. a woman, is declined thus:
SECOND DECLENSION.
Formation of the cases of nouns of the second Declension.
Singular Number.
General Rule for the Genitive. The genitive of polysyllables is like the nominative; of monosyllables is made by adding e to the nominative; as, caraid m. a friend, g. s. caraid; aimsir f. time, g. s. aimsir; tigh m. a house, g. s. tighe; ainm m. a name, g. s. ainme; im m. ”

“ A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word—‘Everything’—and everyone will accept this answer as true. ”

“ We applaud it only because we have never taken the trouble to think about the matter, and take it for granted that all monosyllabic lines must "creep" like that which he puts forward as a specimen. The very frequency of monosyllables in the compositions of our language is one grand cause of that frequency passing uncommented upon by the general reader. The investigation prompted by the criticism will serve only to show its unsoundness.
K.I.P.B.T.
ON GRAY'S ELEGY.
If required to name the most popular English poem of the last century, I should perhaps fix on the Elegy of Gray. ”

“ A syllable is usually a vowel, either alone or in combination with consonants, uttered with a single impulse of stress; but certain consonants may form syllables: oven (= ov-n) , battle (= bæt-l) ; (cf. also the vulgar pronunciation of elm) .
A syllable may be (1) weak or strong, (2) open or closed, (3) long or short.
(1) A weak syllable receives a light stress. Its vowel sound is often different from that of the corresponding strong, or stressed, syllable. Cf. weak and strong my in “I want my lárge hat” and “I want mý hat.”
(2) An open syllable ends in a vowel or diphthong: dē-man, to deem ”

“ A syllable is a sound uttered with one impulse of the breath. The group of letters representing such a sound should never be separated in dividing words; e.g., re-bel ́ (verb) , reb ́-el (noun) , pres ́-ent (noun) , pre-sent ́-ed. To divide a word into syllables, pronounce it slowly and correctly, and note the natural division into sounds. In writing, it is preferable to put the whole word on one line. When this cannot well be done, that part of the word left at the end of one line should suggest the part beginning the next line; e.g., happiness should be divided—happi-ness, not hap-piness. ”