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Linguistics

Notes This would make the second sound like ‘kay-bin’ which is an incorrect pronunciation. In this practice
it is important to concentrate on the most important rules for dividing words into syllables.
Basic Syllable Rules

1. To find the number of syllables
(i) Count the vowels in the word,
(ii) Subtract any silent vowels, (like the silent ‘e’ at the end of a word or the second vowel when
two vowels a together in a syllable)
(iii) Subtract one vowel from every diphthong, (diphthongs only count as one vowel sound.)
(iv) The number of vowels sounds left is the same as the number of syllables.
The number of syllables that you hear when you pronounce a word is the same as the number of
vowels sounds heard. For example:
The word ‘came’ has two vowels, but the ‘e’ is silent, leaving one vowel sound and one syllable.
The word ‘outside’ has four vowels, but the ‘e’ is silent and the ‘ou’ is a diphthong which counts
as only one sound, so this word has only two vowels sounds and therefore, two syllables.
2. Divide between two middle consonants
Split up words that have two middle consonants. For example: hap/pen, bas/ket, let/ter, sup/
per, din/ner, and Den/nis. The only exceptions are the consonant digraphs. Never split up
consonant diagraphs as they really represent only one sound. The exceptions are ‘th’, ‘sh’, ‘ph’,
‘th’, ‘ch’, and ‘wh’.
3. Usually divide before a single middle consonant:
When there is only one syllable we usually divide in front of it, as, in: ‘o/pen’, ‘e/vil’, and ‘re/
port’. The only exceptions are those times when the first syllable has an obvious short sound, as in
‘cab/in’.
4. Divide before the consonant before an ‘-le’ syllable
When you have a word that has the old-style spelling in which the ‘-le’. For example: ‘a/ble’,
‘fum/ble’, ‘rub/ble’ ‘mum/ble’ and ‘thi/stle’. The only exceptions to this are ‘ckle’ words like
‘tick/le’.
5. Devide off any compound words, prefixes, suffixes and roots which have vowel nouns:
For example, un/happy and house /boat, pre/paid or re/write.
17.2 Rhythm

The notion of rhythm involves some noticeable event happening at regular intervals of time; one can
detect the rhythm of a heartbeat, of a flashing light or of a piece of music. It has often been claimed
that English speech is rhythmical, and that the rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of
stressed syllables. Of course, it is not suggested that the timing is as regular as a clock: the regularity
of occurrence is only relative. The theory that English has stress-timed rhythm implies that stressed
syllables will tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed
syllables or not; this would not be the case in “mechanical speech”. An example is given below. In this
sentence, the stressed syllables are given numbers: syllables 1 and 2 are not separated by any unstressed
syllables, 2 and 3 are separated by one unstressed syllable, 3 and 4 by two, and 4 and 5 by three.
1 2 3 4 5
‘Walk ‘down the ‘path to the ‘end of the ca'nal
The stress-timed rhythm theory states that the times from each stressed syllable to the next will tend
to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. The theory also claims
that while some languages (e.g. Russian, Arabic) have stress-timed rhythm similar to that of English,
others (e.g. French, Telugu, Yoruba) have a different rhythmical structure called syllable-timed
rhythm; in these languages, all syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur at regular
time intervals and the time between stressed syllables will be shorter or longer in proportion to the

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