Strong and weak syllables

Strong and weak

One of the most noticeable features of English pronunciation is that some of its syllables are strong while many others are weak; this is also true of many other languages, but it is necessary to study how these weak syllables are pronounced and where they occur in English. The distribution of strong and weak syllables is a subject that will be met later. For example, we will look later at stress, which is very important in deciding whether a syllable is strong or weak. Elision is a closely related subject, and in considering intonation the difference between strong and weak syllables is also important. Finally, words with "strong forms" and "weak forms" are clearly a related matter. We will look at the general nature of weak syllables.

What do we mean by "strong" and "weak"? To begin with, we can look at how we use these terms to refer to phonetic characteristics of syllables. When we compare weak syllables with strong syllables, we find the vowel in a weak syllable tends to be shorter, of lower intensity (loudness) and different in quality. For example, in the word 'data' delta the second syllable, which is weak, is shorter than the first, is less loud and has a vowel that cannot occur in strong syllables. In a word like 'bottle' bɒtḷ the weak second syllable contains no vowel at all, but consists entirely of the consonant ḷ. We call this a syllabic consonant.

There are other ways of characterising strong and weak syllables. We could describe them partly in terms of stress (by saying, for example, that strong syllables are stressed and weak syllables unstressed) but, until we describe what "stress" means, such a description would not be very useful. The most important thing to note at present is that any strong syllable will have as its peak one of the vowel phonemes (or possibly a triphthong), but not a, i, u. If the vowel is one of ɪ , e,  æ ,  Λ , ɒ,  ʊ , then the strong syllable will always have a coda as well. Weak syllables, on the other hand, as they are defined here, can only have one of a very small number of possible peaks. At the end of a word, we may have a weak syllable ending with a vowel (i.e. with no coda):

i) the vowel ə ("schwa");

ii) a close front unrounded vowel in the general area of i:, ɪ, symbolized i;

iii) a close back rounded vowel in the general area of u:, ʊ, symbolized u.

Examples would be:

i) 'better' betə

ii) 'happy' hæpi

iii) 'thank you' θæŋk ju

We also find weak syllables in word-final position with a coda if the vowel is a. For example:

'open' əʊpən

'sharpen' ʃɑ:pən

Inside a word, we can find the above vowels acting as peaks without codas in weak syllables; for example, look at the second syllable in each of these words:

i. 'photograph' fəʊtəgrɑ:f

ii. 'radio' reɪdiəʊ

iii. 'influence' ɪnfluəns

In addition, the vowel I can act as a peak without a coda if the following syllable begins with a consonant:

iv. 'architect' a:kɪtekt

We will look at the different types of weak syllable in more detail.