Number of Syllables

It is generally agreed that speakers of English do not have a great deal of difficulty in identifying the number of syllables in most words. Even in uncommonly used vocabulary such as consumptiveness, docility, divinatory, and cosmographical, decisions are rather quick and unanimous; four syllables in the first two words, and five syllables in the last two.

There are, of course, some words where there are disagreements. They belong, however, to certain limited groups. Some of these are due to dialectal differences. For example, the word military has four syllables, [mɪ.lə.tε.ɹ̣i], in American English, while it has three syllables, [mɪ.lə.tɹi] in British English. Another group of words that may have different numbers of syllables can result from [ə] deletion, as exemplified in veteran [vε.tə.ɹ̣ən] (three syllables) or [vε.tɹ̣ən] (two syllables). Similarly, management could have three syllables, [mæ.nəʤ.mənt], or two, [mænʤ.mənt]. The remaining disputable items, generally, all relate to sonorant consonants. In some of these, the number of syllables will vary depending on whether the nasal consonant is syllabic or not.

For example, chasm may be said to have one or two syllables depending on the status of the final nasal. Similarly, Catholicism may be judged as having four or five syllables. As with nasals, we can cite words with laterals following non-low front vowels. Items such as real, male, and feel may be judged as having one or two syllables. Finally, /ɹ̣/ may be the source of disagreement in words such as fire and hire; these words are monosyllabic for some, but disyllabic for others.

Cases where there is disagreement are clearly limited and should not distract us further from the more important question regarding the definition of the unit syllable. Unfortunately, there is no unanimous decision among scholars regarding the question as to where the unit syllable belongs; whether it should be defined acoustically, articulatorily, or auditorily. Our approach will be based on sonority and the syllables will be described on the basis of peaks of sonority; the suggestion is that the number of syllables in a word will be equal to the number of sonority peaks in that word.