The Syllable in Phonological and Prosodic Structure

Although in some languages there are phonological distinctions between syllabic and nonsyllabic segments, and between accented and unaccented segments. There is reason to believe that neither syllables nor accent-groups (measures) are present in the phonological representations of words in permanent memory. Syllables and other prosodic structures are characteristically predictable from segmental phonological representation and grammatical boundaries. They are, therefore, nondistinctive. Like other derivative, nondistinctive characteristics of speech, they are less readily “available to consciousness” (Sapir, 1921) than basic, distinctive characteristics. And, unlike phonological segments, they are rarely accurately reflected in writing systems, either in so-called syllabic orthographies like kana and devanagari, or in di-vi-sions of words in alphabetic orthographies. For these reasons we assume that the prosodic organization of segments into syllables and syllables into measures arises in the phonological processing of ongoing speech. There is, furthermore, evidence that the means of this organization exists in whatever part of the central nervous system it is that carries out phonological processing. Specifically, there is evidence that prosodic structure is re-adjusted in response to processes which alter other aspects of a representation in the course of phonological processing.