My own space: Syllable Structures in Nepali Language

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Syllable Structures in Nepali Language

1. Introduction to Syllables

A syllable is generally a speech sound of a particular language which can be pronounced with a single puff of breathes. It is an essential element for a morpheme, i.e.: no morpheme can be formed without a syllable. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia states "Syllables are often considered the phonological 'building blocks' of words." For example, in the word 'Book' [bʊk], there is only one syllable, whereas the word 'Copy' [kopi:] is made up of two syllables. We need to break air to pronounce this word between 'co', and 'py'.

The word with a single syllable is called "monosyllabic" (you, go, talk); with two are "disyllabic" (copy, vowel, inbox). In the same way they could be "trisyllabic" or "polysyllabic".

2. Structure of a Syllable

A syllable generally has two parts: onset and rhyme.

I) Onset:

This is initial consonant sound in a syllable. However, it is not necessary that every syllable must have an onset. For example, the word "man" is a monosyllabic word, thus it has only one syllable, ie: "man" itself. Here /m/ is the onset. Yet in another monosyllabic word "aunt", there is no onset, since it begins with the vowel.

Sometimes, onset can be not only a single consonant, but a consonant cluster (combination of two or more consonants without vowel in between). For example, in "school", the onset part is "sch" /sk/.

II) Rhyme:

It is later part occurring after the onset. Further, rhyme can also be divided into two parts:

Nucleus: It is the essential / obligatory part of syllable, and thus is a must for every syllable of every language. More than often, it is a vowel. For example, in the word 'telephone, there are three syllables /te/, /le/, and /fon/ and each of them contain vowel onsets. They are: /e/, /e/ and /o/.

In some cases, the nucleus can be diphthongs (combined together vowels) or even vowel sequences, i.e. two or more vowels coming together without a consonant in between. E.g: in the word "pair", the nucleus is a diphthong.

Coda: It is the consonant sound at the end of a syllable following nucleus. For example, in "man", /n/ is the coda, and in "school", it is " /l/.

Similar to onset, coda is also a non-essential / optional part of the syllable. For example, in the syllable /preI/ from the word "pray" we can't find any coda, but only onset and nucleus. Like onset, consonant clusters can also form coda for a syllable. For example, the coda of "schools" is /ls/, made up of two consonants /l/ and /s/.

The structure of syllable is generally analyzed on the basis of order of vowels and consonants it follows. For example, syllable structure of "school" is CCVC (Consonant-Consonant-Vowel-Consonant).

3. Nepali Syllable Structures

Like English and most of the languages in the world, in Nepali too, vowels are nucleus of a syllable. So, no syllable can be formed without at least a vowel. In addition, consonant or consonant clusters precede or follow the nucleus vowel as onset or rhyme to form syllables.

Structures of syllables in Nepali language are as follows:

I) V