Syllable structure in English and Vietnamese
- In English, a syllable can have as many as three parts: onset, peak, and coda.
- The onset and the coda are consonants, or consonant clusters, that appear at the
beginning and the end of the syllable respectively.
This is a structure of a maximum syllable.
-
- In Vietnamese, syllable has all five parts: first consonant, secondary vowel, main vowel,
last consonant, and a tone mark.
- For instance, the syllable “tuần” (week) has a tone mark (grave accent), a first consonant
(t), a secondary vowel (u), a main vowel (â) and a last consonant (n).
- However, except for main vowel that is required for all syllables, the other parts may be
not present in some cases. For example, the syllable “anh” (brother) has no tone mark,
no secondary vowel and no first consonant. In other case, the syllable “hoa” (flower) has
a secondary vowel (o) but no last consonant.
However, in this presentation, we just focus deeply on the consonants of the syllable in both
English and Vietnamese
In English:
- The sounds attached to the beginning of the nucleus are called the onset: This
term is used in the analysis of syllable structure (and occasionally in other areas);
generally, it refers to the first part of a syllable.
- onsets might consist of one or more sound segments.
o In English this may be zero (when no consonant precedes the vowel in a
syllable) Ex: are / ɑː/, or /ɔ:/, eat / iː t/
o one consonant: ex: bar /bɑ:/, key / ki:/, more /mɔ:/
o or two consonants
pre-initial /s/ + initial: stay /steɪ/, scare/sker/
initial + post-initial /l, r, w, j/: play /pleɪ/, try /traɪ/, queen /kwiːn/,
new /njuː/
o or three consonants order: pre-initial /s/ → initial → post-initial /l,r,w,j/
split /split/, stream /stri:m/, square /slweə/
There are many restrictions on what clusters of consonants may occur in onsets:
for example, if an English syllable has a three-consonant onset, the first
consonant must be s and the last one must be one of I, w, j, r, l.
In Vietnamese:
The Vietnamese onsets can start with 23 consonants.
/b, m, f, v, t, t’, d, n, z, ʐ, s, ş, c, ʈ, ɲ, l, k, χ, ŋ, ɣ, h, ʔ/
Another table was prepared to show available onsets. Onsets are splitted into 3 types.
- Type 1 are onsets which has one letter (excludes the ones in Type 3), note that đ
is the only character not existed in English.
- Type 2 are onsets with 2 letters, qu and gi is two onsets which ended with a
vowel.
- Type 3 are onsets which are paired together. There are 3 pairs ngh/ng, gh/g and
k/c. For rimes started with i, e or ê, the former onsets ngh, gh and k are used
while the latter are used for the rest.
Similar:
The onset can be handled by consonant(s)
Ex: like, sick,
Xanh, bánh
Or can start with a vowel (zero onset)
Ex: anh, ăn
add, each
Difference:
In Vietnamese, the glottal stop is in the charge of the initial (zero-consonant syllable)
Ex: ai /ʔaɪ/
In English, the gottal stop appear before a plosive, or fricative, or nasal, or even
approximant and lateral. When /t/ is the final sound of a word or a sentence
- Vietnamese does not have the initial /p,r/ (except for the loan words)
- Vietnamese has the initial /ŋ/, but english does not.
- Ex: ngoan ngoan, ngon,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
33017676_Vietnamese_Word_Segmentation_with_CRFs_and_SVMs_An_Investigation#pf2
http://www.xn--phtnh-s81bqb.com/2017/10/xem-lai-motvan-e-ngu-am-tieng-viet.html
https://www.hieuthi.com/blog/2017/03/21/all-vietnamese-syllables.html
https://vnlp.net/ti%E1%BA%BFng-vi%E1%BB%87t-c%C6%A1-b%E1%BA%A3n/h%E1%BB
%87-th%E1%BB%91ng-am-v%E1%BB%8B/
