POLISH SYLLABLE IDALIA SMOCZYK

Outline  VARIOUS DEFINITIONS OF A SYLLABLE  SYLLABLES CAN BE DIVIDED INTO :  AMBIGUITY OF DIVISIONS  PHONOLOGICAL MODEL OF POLISH SYLLABLE  THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE ONSETS OF POLISH SYLLABLES  ANALYSIS OF THE POLISH SYLLABLE PROBLEMS  REPRESENTATIONS OF SYLLABLES

VARIOUS DEFINITIONS OF A SYLLABLE    a rhythmical part of a word which usually contains one vowel the smallest independent phonetic unit a segment of speech between two declines of sonority with a clearly marked peak of sonority  d o m sounds a unit in which in a given language phonemes are combined according to particular rules

TYPES OF SYLLABLES  OPEN SYLLABLES ending with a vowel, eg. za-ba-wa, o gło sze-nie  CLOSED SYLLABLES ending with a consonant or a cluster of consonants, eg. staw, pod ręcz-nik

AMBIGUITY OF SYLLABLE DIVISIONS The division of a word into syllables may be ambiguous. Consonantal clusters inside a word can be split in different ways. Two or more different divisions are usually possible!

e.g.:

PHONOLOGICAL MODEL OF POLISH SYLLABLE In Polish only the opposition between a consonant and a vowel is relevant!

( C )* V ( C )* * - the element of the type C can occur many times ( ) - C is optional V - an obligatory element

PARTICULARITIES OF POLISH PHONOTACTICS  In Polish syllable there can be up to 5 consonants at the beginning and at the end of the syllable, eg: – nastepstw / # astempstf # / – Strwiąż / # strfj NS # /  In comparison to other European languages, in Polish the QUANTITY, LENGTH and FREQUENCY of occurrence of consonantal groups is the HIGHEST

THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE ONSETS OF POLISH SYLLABLES  the most frequent combinations of consonants OS-, FT-, FTS O - obstruent (b,p, f,v,ts,dz,d,t...) S - sonorant (m,n,l,j,r ) F - fricative ( f,v,s,z...) T - stop (g,k,d.t,p,b...)

OTHER COMBINATIONS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE  even combinations of the type SO (as opposed to many other European languages) eg:

łże, lśni, mgła

 and combinations of the type OSO eg:

krwawy, trwoga, plwać, płciowy

RESTRICTIONS ON INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF POLISH SYLLABLE      groups of 2+ obstruents must be homogenous as far as voicing is concerned, eg:

zhardzieć, dwa

/j/ can occur only in the immediate neighbourhood of a vowel, eg:

jawa

groups: /rl/, /lr/ do NOT occur in Polish onsets /n/ and /n/ do NOT occur in OSO the combinations of a nasal sonorant + a stop of the same place of articulation (eg. /nd/, /mb/) do NOT occur in Polish onsets

METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE STUDY  no research concerning all possible combinations of consonants and vowels in the Polish syllable is known  the analysis made on the basis of 240 words (out of 20.000) occurring most frequently on WWW pages on the Internet. Therefore, the study does not fully reflect reality  only onsets of Polish syllables analysed

Tree representation of Polish CCCCV onsets 1 z' f s k 20 1 21 34 44 34 45 22 r 23 1 1 1

wstrząs

1

from

20 1 30 21 40 31 50 41 s t k

to

23 6 6 31

to

33 30 21 40 34 41 6 50 f b k s f r k r f s p t S o~

źdźbło

r r j f a a

strwożony

40 41 42 z’ s b f t w r o p t 44 45 50 6 o f S f j j w 50 o 51 a 52 o~ e 53 6