Issues of English Syllabification

English syllabification is not completely uniform. It can vary from one dictionary to another. Certain analyses follow morphological rather than phonetic principles. Many linguists follow the principle of ambisyllabicity for sounds such as the flap, which only occurs intervocalically in English. Syllabification can also vary among dialects.

Consider the words influence and safely. If we follow the Maximum Onset Principle, they must be syllabified in.flu.ence and sa.fely. However, the word safely consists of the root safe and the affix ly. The result is that many speakers realize the syllable boundary between the root and the suffix. The result is thus safe.ly. Another possible analysis is to place the labiodental fricative in both the first and second syllables.

The word very can be syllabified ver.y and ve.ry. In rhotic dialects, the first analysis is preferable because we can analyze the first syllable as one with an r-coloured vowel. For non-rhotic varietes, however, r-coloured vowels do not exist and the latter analysis is ideal.

With the word caller, varieties of English such as RP use an alveolar lateral without velarization. In this case, the word can be syllabified ca.ller. The lateral is never velarized when it occurs syllable-initially in RP. For this reason, the lateral can be placed in the onset of the second syllable. However, in varieties of English which produce a velarized alveolar lateral in words such as caller, the analysis call.er is preferable. Here the lateral is syllable-final and thus velarized.

Syllabification in English can be represented with various analyses. One approach is to place certain segments such as the intervocalic flap of city in two syllables. Other approaches consider differences among dialects in the syllabification of sounds such as laterals, r-coloured vowels and alveolar approximants.