In this chapter …

In this chapter we look more systematically at the structure of English syllables, about which up to now we've been simply using our linguistic intuitions. We see that syllables may interestingly be distinguished into two classes – lexical monosyllables, and non-lexical ones – and that these classes also have a bearing on the linguistic stress (or lack of it) of particular syllables. Presence or absence of stress also correlates to some extent with the presence of schwa in phonemic transcriptions. Schwa is almost invariably diagnostic of stresslessness. At the end of the chapter we refine our work on one aspect of the English stress system, and we'll see that there are generalisations to be made about primary stress, secondary stress and unstress. We introduce that work by thinking about the phonology, and to some extent the morphology, of English compound words.

Preliminaries, and a note on schwa

Because you've completed exercise 4d you're in a position to understand that the consonant system of English isn't distributed, and therefore doesn't work, merely randomly: the terms of the system – the consonant phonemes – are, in terms of their distribution, constrained. What does ‘constrained’ mean?