Syllable core

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The syllable core ( nucleus , syllable peak ) is the moment of the greatest sonic fullness of a syllable and thus its sonorous main part (“ segment with the highest prominence ”). As a rule, this syllable nucleus is vowel . If there is no vowel, the syllable core is on a flowing sound ( liquida ) or on a fricative ( fricative ).

The syllable as the smallest free phonological unit has exactly one nucleus. Consonantic satellite phonemes ( syllable initials and syllable coda ) can surround the nucleus. A larger phonological unit can have several syllable kernels.

In the simplest case, a syllable core consists of exactly one vowel. In most languages, the lightest complex is a syllable core made up of two vowels and thus a diphthong. Triphthong, i.e. a direct sequence of three vowels or half-vowels in the nucleus, are also less common and have syllable peaks.

The IPA diacritical mark is a small line below the mark. An example in German would be [ˈbeːtn̩] for pray.

Examples

  • Vowel as a syllable peak in German: "Haken", "Wandel", "lesen "or" haben "
  • empty syllable sound with unstressed vowel in German: "chaos", "any" or "near"
  • Hiatus moves the summit in German: "chaotisch"
  • a liquid as nucleus: German "Teufel" or Croatian Krk
  • a sonorous consonant ( sonorant , here a nasal ) as a syllable summit: German “have”, “run”, “read”, “change” or in Swahili mtu for “man”
  • a fricative as a hissing syllable core in German: "psst"
  • a triphthong in English: hire or flour

Phonotactic classification

The phonology of a language divides the sounds into phonological sonority classes , which are relative to one another. The syllabicity of a speech sound is not an intrinsic , context-free feature of a segment , but the comparative result of the syntagmatic contrast of the segment with sufficient sonority compared to other segments with sounds of less sonority. A sound is syllabic if it has a syllable core .

Relation to the sonority principle

The sonority principle states that the sonority of each syllable increases towards the syllable peak and then decreases again.

rhyme

The nucleus and the coda ( final ) together constitute the rhyme .

accent

The syllable core is the carrier of the accent . The German language has a stem syllable accent (see word accent ).

Accent distribution rule

The Latin accent distribution rule states that in a word with at least three syllables the penultimate syllable should be stressed if it is difficult. Otherwise the third from last syllable is stressed (see syllable weight ).

See also

swell