Syllable

“ A syllable of this kind may retain its full value, so as to form by itself the entire thesis of a foot. (2) It may be slurred, so that it combines with another unaccented syllable to form a thesis. (3) It may lose its syllabic value altogether, its vowel being elided and its consonantal part (if it has any) being attracted to the root-syllable. By the last-mentioned process, as is well known, the number of inflexional syllables has been greatly reduced in Modern as compared with Middle and Old English. ”

“ A syllable, in modern verse, is heavy or light, according as it is accented or unaccented—that is to say, according as it receives stress from the voice or not. In the word “tulip,” for instance, the syllables are of equal length, but the accent is strongly upon the first. ”

“ In verses consisting only of a certain number of syllables, nothing can be of more ease, or greater use to poets, than the retaining or cutting off a syllable from a verse, according as the measure of it requires; and therefore it is requisite to treat of the elisions that are allowable in our poetry, some of which have been already taken notice of in the preceding section.
By elision I mean the cutting off one or more letters from a word, whereby two syllables come to be contracted into one, or the taking away an entire syllable. ”

“ 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 called short, when the accent lies on the consonant, so that the vowel is quickly joined to the succeeding letter: as “Crăck, lĭttle, dĕvil.”
The pronunciation of a long syllable commonly occupies double the time of a short one: thus, “Pāte,” and “Brōke,” must be pronounced as slowly again as “Păt,” and “Knŏck.”
We have remarked a curious tendency in the more youthful students of Grammar to regard the quantity of words (in their lessons) more as being “small” or “great” than as coming under the head of “long” or “short.” ”

“ In the formation of syllables, I consider that the sound of breath arrested belongs to the first, and the sound of breath escaping to the second syllable; that each sound being expressed by a separate sign, the word happy is divided thus, haπ-πy; and that such is the case with all consonants between two syllables. The whole consonant belongs neither to one syllable nor the other. Half of it belongs to each. The reduplication of the p in happy, the t in pitted, &c, is a mere point of spelling, of which more will be said in the chapter on orthography. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How the organs of any man can be brought to articulate so many consonants in the weak syllables, or how the ear can relish such an unnatural pronunciation, is almost inconceiveable. In spite of the pedantry of scholars, the ease and melody of speaking, have almost wholly banished the absurd practice, by restoring the accent to the second syllable. ”

“ The strength of the expiration may be greatest either at the beginning, the end or the middle of the syllable, and, according as it is so, the accent is a falling, a rising, or a rising and falling one. Syllables in which the stress is produced continuously whether increasing or decreasing are called single-pointed syllables, those in which a variation in the stress occurs without being strong enough to break the syllable into two are called double-pointed syllables. ”

“ A syllable long by nature or position, and preceded by a short syllable, was itself shortened if the accent of the word fell immediately before or immediately after it,—that is, on the preceding short syllable or on the next following syllable. ”

“ Trissyllables ending in ator or atour, as creátour; or having in the middle syllable a diphthong, as endeávour; or a vowel before two consonants, as doméstick; accent the middle syllable.
15. Trissyllables that have their accent on the last syllable are commonly French, as acquiésce, repartée, magazíne, or words formed by prefixing one or two syllables to an acute syllable, as immatúre, overchárge.
16. Polysyllables, or words of more than three syllables, follow the accent of the words from which they are derived, as árrogating, cóntinency, incóntinently, comméndable, commúnicableness. ”

“ Now as a syllable bearing a secondary accent cannot become mute, as an unaccented syllable does, if required, it is evident that those inflexional syllables which follow upon long root-syllables and frequently do become silent cannot bear that secondary accent which has been ascribed to them by several scholars; on the contrary, all syllables subject in the same way to elision, apocope, syncope, and slurring must have the same degree of stress (i.e. they must be alike unaccented) whether preceded by short or by long root-syllables. ”

“ As high and low, loud and soft, forcible and feeble, are comparative terms, words of one syllable pronounced alone, and without relation to other words or syllables, cannot be said to have any accent The only distinction to which such words are liable, is an elevation or depression of voice, when we compare the beginning with the end of the word or syllable. Thus a monosyllable, considered singly, rises from a lower to a higher tone in the question Nó? ”

“ When one word in a sentence is distinguished by a stress, as more important than the rest, we may say that it is emphatical, or that an emphasis is laid upon it. When one syllable in a word is distinguished by a stress, and more audible than the rest, we say that it is accented, or that an accent is put upon it. Accent, therefore, is to syllables what emphasis is to sentences ”

“ Correct pronunciation depends upon three things, correct sounding of the letters, correct division into syllables, and correct placing of the accent.
A syllable is the smallest separately articulated, or pronounced, element in speech, or one of the parts into which speech is broken. It consists of a vowel alone or accompanied by one or more consonants and separated by them, or by a pause, from a preceding or following vowel. This division of words into syllables is indicated in dictionaries by the use of the hyphen thus: sub-trac-tion, co-or-din-ate. ”

“ If any vowel sound is to be called the open sound because the letter ends a syllable, or is not shut by a consonant, it is, undoubtedly, the primal and most usual sound, as found in the letter when accented, and not some other of rare occurrence. ”

“ Each syllable consists of a consonant or a cluster plus a vowel, spoken on one of the four tones or atonically. Of the vowels, /a, i, u, ei, ou, ai, au/ occur also with nasal final.
4. There are four tones. For details see sections 25–30. Tone I is indicated by an acute accent / ́/, tone II by a circumflex /ˆ/, tone III by a grave /`/, and tone IV is written with a final Ɂ.
cá ‘water lily’; cán ‘sugar cane’; câ ‘tiger’; cân ‘floor’; càn ‘rhinoceros’; caɁ ‘rupee’; càdé ‘falls’ (verbs will be quoted throughout with ‐té final particle. See 36) . Syllables in tone IV never have nasal finals. ”

“ But in the case of words which we form ourselves, we will find practically no exceptions to the rule that a short vowel in a syllable next to the last must be followed by a double consonant when accented, while a short vowel in a syllable before the next to the last is not followed by a double consonant when the syllable is accented. ”

“ For metrical purposes, syllables (not vowels) are distinguished by the grammarians as heavy (guru) or light (laghu) . A syllable is heavy if its vowel is long, or short and followed by more than one consonant (“long by position”) . Anusvāra and visarga count as full consonants in making heavy syllable. The last syllable of a pāda (primary division of a verse) is reckoned as either heavy or light.
a. The distinction in terms between the difference of long and short in vowel-sound and that of heavy and light in syllable-construction is valuable, and should be observed.
IV. Accent. ”

“ Every English verse which has disengaged itself from the versicle [1] is composed, and all verses that are disengaging themselves therefrom show a nisus towards being composed, of feet of one, two, or three syllables.
The foot of one syllable is always long, strong, stressed, accented, what-not. ”

“ Without a vowel there is no syllable and sometimes the vowel itself is a syllable. Therefore all the other letters are called consonants, because they don’t constitute sounds by themselves unless a vowel is joined to them. They have some imperfect, maimed (mancum) sound, e.g. b, c, d, g, which without e cannot be sounded. Out of syllables we get words, and from words connected speech, which all beasts lack. And you would not be different from the beasts, if you could not converse properly. Be watchful and perform your work diligently. Go out with your fellow-pupils and learn what I have set. ”

“ The foot of two syllables usually consists of one long and one short syllable, and though it is not essential that either should come first, the short precedes rather more commonly.
The foot of three syllables never has more than one long syllable in it, and that syllable, save in the most exceptional rhythms, is always the first or the third. In modern poetry, by no means usually, but not seldom, it has no long syllable at all. ”

“ The terms long and short, which are often used to denote certain vowel sounds; being also used, with a different import, to distinguish the quantity of syllables, are frequently misunderstood; for which reason, we have substituted for them the terms open and close;--the former, to denote the sound usually given to a vowel when it forms or ends an accented syllable; as, ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by;--the latter, to denote the sound which the vowel commonly takes when closed by a consonant ”

“ Only the vowel forms that appear at the beginning of a syllable are listed. A syllable is defined as a graph or group of graphs followed by a tsheg ( ་ ) . The forms used for vowels following a consonant can be found in grammars. 5. ”

“ Whenever, in a word of two or more syllables an unaccented vowel or digraph occurs in the last syllable between a liquid (l, m, n, r) and any other consonant, or between two liquids, the unaccented vowel or digraph is elided whenever the word is lengthened by a grammatical inflection beginning with a vowel. ”

“ A verse is generally (but not always) written as one line. Hence, the words “verse” and “line” are often used as synonyms.
459 Syllaba Anceps.
2534. In the present work, the final syllable of each verse is marked long or short as the rhythm may require, without reference to its quantity in a given example; and in the general schemes it is to be understood that the final syllable is syllaba anceps (2533) unless the contrary is expressly stated.
2535. Dicolic and Asynartetic Verses. A verse which consists of two rhythmical series (or cola) is called dicolic. ”

“ Since, as we have seen, the language consists of syllables of very uniform structure, the syllable stands out rather sharply in syntax and derivation.
32. The nouns and verbs, which are the minimal free forms of the language (its words) , are preponderantly monosyllabic: lú ‘person’; lá ‘come’. ”

“ Though the first close syllable is taken (a consonant being taken from the next syllable very often to close it as putpute, from pu te) , yet when no consonant is at hand for the purpose, or only r, two syllables are taken, or made by adding e. Thus, liwoa, 'great,' liwoliwoa; purei, 'unskilled,' purepurei. ”

“ Another rule for laying the accent of words arises from derivation. Thus all words that take the terminations ing, ful, less, ness, ed, est, ist, ly, retain the accent on the syllable where it is laid in their primitives; as proceed, proceeding, wonder, wonderful, &c.
But the most important article to be considered in the accentuation of words, is the terminating syllable. From the different terminations of words arise various analogies, the most of which are enumerated in the first part of my Institute. ”

“ Toneless syllables consist of consonant followed by a neutral vowel which we write as a without a tone mark. A toneless syllable never stands alone and is never final in a group.
Consonants, 8–15
8. Stop, affricate, and sibilant consonants occur in five positions: velar stop, prepalatal affricate, normal sibilant, alveolar stop, and labial stop; and in three orders: plain voiceless, aspirated voiceless, and plain voiced.
Examples:
9. ”

“ There is a tendency toward the coincidence of long and accented, and of short and unaccented, syllables. This we have seen to be true in two different senses. In the first place, an accented syllable is likely to be lengthened for the same reason that it is accented—because of its relative importance in the place where it stands. In the second place, syllables noticeably long are avoided in those places in the verse where the accent does not fall, and are preferred where the stress is heavy. ”