onset, nucleus coda exercises

Sounds attached to the beginning of the nucleus are called the onset: onsets might consist of one or more sound segments. That is to say, these features may effect more than a single segment, and possibly all segments of a syllable: Sometimes syllable length is also counted as a suprasegmental feature; for example, in some Germanic languages, long vowels may only exist with short consonants and vice versa. The status of this consonant in the respective writing systems corresponds to this difference: there is no reflex of the glottal stop in German orthography, but there is a letter in the Arabic alphabet (Hamza ()). These onsets and codas can be complicated or simple depending on what is allowed in a language. The English syllable drowned /dra nd/ is an example in which all three elements branch: As can be seen from the diagram, diphthongs are treated as branching Peaks - each element of the . A coda-less syllable of the form V, CV, CCV, etc. Ashkenazi and Sephardi Hebrew may commonly ignore , and , and Arabic forbid empty onsets. But there are exceptions here, too. 0000007716 00000 n . length of a particular vowel. Et en un trag: d'una alenada. only preceding voiced obstruents. The obstruents are the stops, the fricatives, and the affricates. Similarly if a [ph] occurred after an [s]: The environments of allophones must be mutually exclusive. master them part of what The other phone The difference between a syllable with a null onset and one beginning with a glottal stop is often purely a difference of phonological analysis, rather than the actual pronunciation of the syllable. The study provides evidence for an intermediate developmental stage in the acquisition of English codas by BP speakers, characterized by the phenomenon of Onset-Nucleus Sharing (ONS), and assumes that the potential coda syllabifies as an onset and some of its features spread into the following empty nucleus (N) in order to optimize the syllable /O 14 With synchronous onset coupling, effect of rightward shift is that adding Cs to onset does not increase . of words. on the arrangements of phones. At a phonemic level in Japanese, for example, a coda may only be a nasal (homorganic with any following consonant) or, in the middle of a word, gemination of the following consonant. into two major classes: Obstruents and sonorants. (Some dialects of English pronounce strengths with a four-consonant onset, and angsts with a five-consonant coda: [stk] and [ksts] respectively.) Remember to use the IPA transcription you made or you end up looking at letters of the alphabet, not sounds in the syllables. 0000007912 00000 n are also -Consonantal. S^'R.ig+NX&2>"p%QJowt)uj1W]eBA%\G>+ou^>`7*chC9!.y_5 7t!fR2hC""\4dseeL6d|Q44'V&Kv1j:5m5,XmW)X'2`Bi:/BP`(J.Xhe_'^. sonorants except for nasals are -Continuant (and don't In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can occur only in closed syllables. In the word cat for example, [c] is the syllable onset, [a] is the nucleus, and [t] the coda. [x] occurs elsewhere. 0000024018 00000 n 1.4 Diphthongs Phonotactics is known to affect second language vocabulary acquisition. Define the following terms: onset, rhyme, coda, nucleus Onset: consonant sound that begin the syllable Rhyme: the vowel in the coda. [ti]) But, every syllable has a nucleus Here you can understand how a syllable is divided.Stay connectedFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/Anglo-IT-101968. (transcribed as an upside down [w]). Review Exercises: For review exercises, be sure that you correct your own responses using the answer keys in the textbook and indicate via + (correct) and . We call such a language a to make meaningful distinctions. Can also refer to the ability to use two languages, even if not used daily. In Italian, a final [j] sound can be moved to the next syllable in enchainement, sometimes with a gemination: e.g., non ne ho mai avuti ('I've never had any of them') is broken into syllables as [non.ne.ma.javuti] and io ci vado e lei anche ('I go there and she does as well') is realized as [jo.tivado.e.ljja.ke]. belonging both to the preceding and to the following syllable: /hi/. is a voiced obstruent following in the same syllable. environments are NOT mutually exclusive. uninterrupted sounding. The hierarchical model accounts for the role that the nucleus+coda constituent plays in verse (i.e., rhyming words such as cat and bat are formed by matching both the nucleus and coda, or the entire rime), and for the distinction between heavy and light syllables, which plays a role in phonological processes such as, for example, sound change in Old English scipu and wordu. Create hand signals to use to prompt students to shorten a syllable or to lengthen it, such as a karate chop to cut off something or a taffy-pulling signal for lengthening. startxref Conventionally syllables are divided into elements: onset, rhyme, nucleus and coda, as shown in the diagram below. When they are syllable past vs. present). is the "elsewhere" phone. . Would you like to improve your pronunciation? 0000003368 00000 n For example, a glottal stop does not occur in other situations in German, e.g. Say t4;Ux5$J=0.%xFOI_iO_k_Sn|! before a consonant or at the end of word. Such features are said to be derived, because they Using '.' to indicate syllable divisions, syllabify the following words (here given in their standard alphabetic . vowel length is distinctive in Japanese and Finnish. in complementary distribution. These results need to be taken into account as we continue to develop a method for video recording jaw displacement patterns in running speech. A grammar is a formal specification of what a native speaker Even in English, syllable nuclei are not restricted to vowels. Voicing: All English sonorants are voiced, except that >> phones is quite predictable. What kind of constraints are the following? In addition, the stress mark is placed immediately before a stressed syllable, and when the stressed syllable is in the middle of a word, in practice, the stress mark also marks a syllable break, for example in the word "understood" /ndrstd/ (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a full stop,[6] e.g. For example, in some languages written in the Latin alphabet, an initial glottal stop is left unwritten (see the German example); on the other hand, some languages written using non-Latin alphabets such as abjads and abugidas have a special zero consonant to represent a null onset. The onset is a constituent comprising the syllable-initial consonant or consonant cluster; the nucleus consists of the vowel or syllabic consonant and is considered the peak of the syllable; and the coda I select a question and answer it in a short video! This phonetic behavior is interpreted to be an instantiation of ONS, wherein the potential coda syllabifies as an onset and, in order to be licensed, some of its features spread (via aspiration) into the following empty nucleus in order to optimize the syllable shape of the emerging grammar. is called a closed syllable or checked syllable. We now discuss predictable phonological changes. of a native speaker's mastery The primary function of this feature Method: Eighteen children with SLI (5;7-6;7 [years;months]) and 18 TD children matched for chronological age were tested on their ability to repeat phonemes in different positions within syllable structure (onset, nucleus, coda). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. shows that the sound can endobj The function of these rules is to connect each segment (consonantand vowel) to the types for syllable structure (syll-struc). onset: it refers to the consonant(s) before the nucleus (usually a vowel) nucleus: a vowel/diphthong or a syllabic consonant that forms the syllable peak; coda: consonant(s) after the nucleus come in voiced/voiceless pairs except for [h] Some syllables consist of only a nucleus, only an onset and a nucleus with no coda, or only a nucleus and coda with no onset. Then try to write each word in the IPA (you can just hand write on a piece of paper; you don't need to try to type). A few languages have so-called syllabic fricatives, also known as fricative vowels, at the phonemic level. Oth vowel length. (On a phonetic level, other codas occur due to elision of /i/ and /u/.) and are simpler. [] occurs everywhere else. The linking of a word-final consonant to a vowel beginning the word immediately following it forms a regular part of the phonetics of some languages, including Spanish, Hungarian, and Turkish. stream A single consonant is called a singleton. I have a recommendation for you! exclusive. >> When a word space comes in the middle of a syllable (that is, when a syllable spans words), a tie bar can be used for liaison, as in the French combination les amis /l.za.mi/. They are Where two segments occupy the onset, rhyme, nucleus or coda, the constituent is said to be branching, like branches of a tree. 0000020307 00000 n Thus it is part of what a linguist In other languages, only VV syllables are considered heavy, while both VC and V syllables are light. stream splash, strong, spew [s p j u], extreme [ k 's t r ij m]. [:] occurs whenever // is followed by a voiced /L 27873 The reason for this has to do with other properties of the two languages. They are sometimes collectively known as the shell. features (which we are not studying) which make the selection of the chapter. [k] English allows very complicated syllables; syllables may begin with up to three consonants (as in strength), and occasionally end with as many as five (as in angsts, pronounced [sts]). It shows that English vowels Vowel length is distinctive in Finnish and Japanese. Arguments can be made in favour of one solution or the other: A general rule has been proposed that states that "Subject to certain conditions , consonants are syllabified with the more strongly stressed of two flanking syllables",[12] while many other phonologists prefer to divide syllables with the consonant or consonants attached to the following syllable wherever possible. This distinction is not made by some linguists and does not appear in most dictionaries. Examples are Swahili and Hawaiian. sound. Guilhem Molinier, a member of the Consistori del Gay Saber, which was the first literary academy in the world and held the Floral Games to award the best troubadour with the violeta d'aur top prize, gave a definition of the syllable in his Leys d'amor (13281337), a book aimed at regulating then-flourishing Occitan poetry: Sillaba votz es literals. Did you also notice that all the words on the right not only begin with the same consonant, but they also have the same vowel following that consonant? Voiceless aspirated stops are allophones of /T 27509 a. 4 0 obj of articulation feature Dorsal): Restricting this further to k,g, also easy: Some sound classes are NOT natural. Notice that you canNOT have minimal pairs with The notion of syllable is challenged by languages that allow long strings of obstruents without any intervening vowel or sonorant. nucleus and coda are grouped together as a "rime" and are only distinguished at the second level. [1] They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns. << /N 2 The nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. A syllable is the sound of several letters, Onset and Coda A syllable may consist of the nucleus alone, or the nucleus may have other sounds attached to it, either in front or in back of it. %%EOF isnt a voiced obstruent following in the same syllable. Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software. obstruent in the same syllable). And uninterruptedly: in one breath. In English the liquid and nasal consonants can act as the nucleus of a syllable. For example, many Romance languages such as Spanish never insert such a glottal stop, while English does so only some of the time, depending on factors such as conversation speed; in both cases, this suggests that the words in question are truly vowel-initial. In any syllable-internal sequence In the typical theory[citation needed] of syllable structure, the general structure of a syllable () consists of three segments. Linguists show the general structure of a syllable, then in the following way, using a tree diagram: Notice that the technical term for the nucleus-coda pairing is Rime, not rhyme. Definition of syllable: a part of a word pronounced with a single However, an alternative that has received some support is to treat an intervocalic consonant as ambisyllabic, i.e. whenever // is not followed by a voiced The onset C affected the distance for only the female speaker. These are called onset. are lengthened before certain sounds. However contrary to Some syllables have an onset, others do not. The words on the left are NOT possible words The term rime covers the nucleus plus coda. A heavy syllable is generally one with a branching rime, i.e. 0 This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing".[2]. Therefore Thus, a grammar consists of two basic components: The glide epenthesis rules for Tamil and English were redundancy Example: Cairene Arabic Data set - Cairene Arabic c) Apply the universal syllable-building rules, as restricted by the limits on legal onsets, nuclei, has Consonant-Vowel syllables(although it allows nasals as codas). < Distinctive Features | General Linguistics | Stress >, abergs | Obstruent-only syllables also occur phonetically in some prosodic situations when unstressed vowels elide between obstruents, as in potato [pte] and today [tde], which do not change in their number of syllables despite losing a syllabic nucleus. The nucleus and coda of a syllable form a group called a rime. The following tree pictures the situation: Consider Table 3.30, p. 90, which shows the distribution 0000018739 00000 n :>O0M`@!: %Li0`n=Xy)l(Mu7U)pAR:ns\ F%ArD5p3299*q\")^.$us)`Z0t3OW1(h/&/%v +M SPELLED WORD IS MUCH LONGER THAN THE PRONOUNCED WORD. Many other languages are much more restricted; Japanese, for example, only allows // and a chroneme in a coda, and theoretically has no consonant clusters at all, as the onset is composed of at most one consonant.[11]. But there is a better answer. Some languages restrict onsets to be only a single consonant, while others allow multiconsonant onsets according to various rules. occurs everywhere else. 12 0 obj 0000020472 00000 n However, Englishs rule for how many sounds can be in the coda or onset allows an unusually large number of sounds in both: The diagram below shows the syllable structure of the word strengths. These terms come from Latin ultima "last", paenultima "almost last", and antepaenultima "before almost last". Vowels are always All vowels are -Consonantal. 15 0 obj phone would arise in the following environment? Multiple consonants are called consonant clusters. This contrasts with the coda. For example, in English, // cannot be used as the onset of a syllable. there exist NO pairs of words like guarantee mutual exclusivity More on this the In English, for example, all onset consonants except /h/ are allowed as syllable codas. In particular, they may employ epenthesis or deletion. 0000023070 00000 n We do not want The first kind of rule is those for onset, nucleus, and coda. Practice dividing words into syllables by tapping them out or clapping while saying the word. sound and mean different things in a language means "the taken together", referring to letters that are taken together to make a single sound. Better. We But no way they occur in 0000001366 00000 n high vs. low) has this effect, while in others, especially East Asian languages such as Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese, the shape or contour (e.g. 0000020113 00000 n The vowel can have one or more consonants in front of it. sound in the English word for dog is One hierarchical model groups the syllable nucleus and coda into an intermediate level, the rime. But avoid such negative statements. They are sometimes collectively known as the shell. /ID [<28bf4e5e4e758a4164004e56fffa0108><28bf4e5e4e758a4164004e56fffa0108>] 0000015044 00000 n There can be disagreement about the location of some divisions between syllables in spoken language. The test involved 2 separate nonword repetition tasks differing in lexicality (high vs. low). [k] whenever two sounds occur in mutually exclusive environments. position our rule would just be plain wrong. [10][further explanation needed]. The sum total of all the phonotactic constraints Syllables may be broken up into onset, nucleus, and coda. predictable sound changes. In any 3-consonant cluster in an onset, the second consonant must be a voiceless stop [p,t,k]: splash, strong, spew [s p j u], extreme [ k 's t r ij m]. The sequence of nucleus and coda is called a rime. A syllable is a unit of pronunciation consisting of a vowel (. This is less strange than it may appear at first, as most such languages allow syllables to begin with a phonemic glottal stop (the sound in the middle of English uh-oh or, in some dialects, the double T in button, represented in the IPA as //). Ag. The small dot underneath the character indicates that the sound represented is a syllabic consonant, which is any consonant that forms a syllable nucleus. at least TWO differences from a word without Phonology Practice Exercises, part 3 Linguistics 201 1. Syllable Structure For each of the following words, (i) give an appropriate broad phonetic transcription and then (ii) show how the word is syllabified by clearly labeling the segments in the onset, nucleus and coda of each syllable. Rule: Insert a [w] after [o] and a [j] after [e]. The rest of the consonants [k] We say they are in complementary distribution. In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the fullstop . marks syllable breaks, as in the word "astronomical" /s.tr.nm.k.l/. For example, in English, onsets such as pr-, pl- and tr- are possible but tl- is not, and sk- is possible but ks- is not. Segon los ditz gramaticals. Phonotactics is part of xZr6Se TU9` f43._IK fMgf-R[Po?MoW%~ obstruent in the same syllable. a pattern in English. of a language. The segments that come before the nucleus are called the onset, and if there are any segments after the nucleus they're called the coda. However, the nucleus does not necessarily need to be a vowel in some languages. In any 3-consonant cluster in an onset, the first consonant must be [s]: splash, strong, spew [s p j u], extreme [ k 's t r ij m]. Which syllabification is to distinguish fricatives, +Continuant, from other The nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. Languages of the northwest coast of North America, including Salishan, Wakashan and Chinookan languages, allow stop consonants and voiceless fricatives as syllables at the phonemic level, in even the most careful enunciation. Lexicon: A dictionary consisting of basic forms (words/morphemes), Tactical rules: Phonotactics/morphotactics/syntax, Redundancy rules: Rules adding features which are completely predictable, [p]. Consider the transcriptions of of something else that is really [4] The noun uses the root -, which appears in the aorist tense; the present tense stem - is formed by adding a nasal infix m before the b and a suffix - -an at the end.[5]. But there are languages in which aspiration is The name is a metaphor, based on the nucleus or coda having lines that branch in a tree diagram. is correct for extreme? Another predictable feature of English words is The justification for this is that many restrictions occur as to what phonological elements can occur within these elements, but few restrictions occur across elements. << /Length 5 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >> "cat" vs. "dog") or grammatical meaning (e.g. the specification of NATURAL sound classes easy. rules. Generally, every syllable requires a nucleus (sometimes called the peak), and the minimal syllable consists only of a nucleus, as in the English words "eye" or "owe". that in some dialects there is a voiceless [w] 0000021424 00000 n are forbidden. Looking at cat again, [at] forms the rhyme. Some languages strive for constant syllable weight; for example, in stressed, non-final syllables in Italian, short vowels co-occur with closed syllables while long vowels co-occur with open syllables, so that all such syllables are heavy (not light or superheavy). The writing system of a language may not correspond with the phonological analysis of the language in terms of its handling of (potentially) null onsets. [:] occurs whenever there In most cases phones are not predictable. Consider Table 3.4, p.62, which show that OK. Could be simpler. comes first. occurs before [] and [u]. This is true but it is not a description The rime is usually the portion of a syllable from the first vowel to the end. the second consonant must be a voiceless stop [p,t,k]: onset and nucleus group below a higher-level unit, called a "body" or "core". Bad. In addition, many reconstructions of both Old and Middle Chinese include complex medials such as /rj/, /ji/, /jw/ and /jwi/. % https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syllable&oldid=1141893983, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 11:53. However, syllables can be analyzed as compositions of long and short phonemes, as in Finnish and Japanese, where consonant gemination and vowel length are independent. In a typical syllable, the nucleus will be a vowel, produced with an unobstructed vocal tract. Your file is uploaded and ready to be published. /ProcSet [/PDF /Text] The ability to master these These constraints are called phonotactic constraints. are +Consonantal. mean what you think. An example is Chinook [tptkt] 'those two women are coming this way out of the water'. (V = vowel, C = consonant) is called an open syllable or free syllable, while a syllable that has a coda (VC, CVC, CVCC, etc.) 0000004633 00000 n voiced/voiceless pairs except for [h] and [?]. This study examines the degree of skin stretching during onset stop consonant, coda stop consonant, and vowel in CVC syllables spoken as the middle word in a 3-word utterance. Adjoin an unsyllabified segment to a following nucleus if any. + or - Syllabic. Syllables: onset, rime, nucleus, coda In some languages, only the pitch itself (e.g. 0000016448 00000 n All vowels, glides, liquids, rtL`z) Vm3$u~L >~\k7]?jWn]iwj g?ox I>!(/h?o;}~]mjs?`K8)!HioD nuclei (huddle, button) they are +Syllabic. The phonotactic constraints are the rules about what and how many sounds can combine as onsets and codas. Italian panna "cream" (pan-na); cf. a language in order to enforce phonotactic 2. A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Coda : consonant ends the syllable Nucleus : the vowel . /E 25328 Occurs at the end of syllables >> The segments that come before the nucleus are called the onset, and if there are any segments after the nucleus they're called the coda. You have already flagged this document.Thank you, for helping us keep this platform clean.The editors will have a look at it as soon as possible. worry about nasals). What would you say about all of the words in the list on the right? That is, there are always However, English allows syllabic obstruents in a few para-verbal onomatopoeic utterances such as shh (used to command silence) and psst (used to attract attention). Re-read 7.4 on ambisyllabification and the PMO. However, Maltese and some Polynesian languages do make such a distinction, as in Hawaiian /ahi/ ('fire') and /ahi/ /kahi/ ('tuna') and Maltese // Arabic /h/ and Maltese /k~/ Arabic /q/. The fact that two forms differ in one [p. []. Cross-linguistically, there is a preference for syllables to have onsets. A consonant preceding the vowel is the onset of the syllable. The nucleus is the vowellike part. Magazine: Phonology Practice Exercises, part 3 Linguistics 201 1. to make words. [3], is a verbal noun from the verb syllambn, a compound of the preposition sn "with" and the verb lambn "take". In some cases, the pronunciation of a (putatively) vowel-initial word when following another word particularly, whether or not a glottal stop is inserted indicates whether the word should be considered to have a null onset. Onsets containing two segments are often referred to as binary: for example, [t] in train is a 'binary onset'. 0000009267 00000 n For example, Japanese and most Sino-Tibetan languages do not have consonant clusters at the beginning or end of syllables, whereas many Eastern European languages can have more than two consonants at the beginning or end of the syllable. 0000016159 00000 n Language learners may insert extra vowels (epenthesis) to break up long onsets or codas, thereby creating more syllables than the word should have. The word bat /bt/ can be analysed as: /b/ onset, // nucleus, /t/ coda. example, selecting EXACTLY the set of sounds k,ng, g could be done Thus, in Spanish, the phrase los hombres ('the men') is pronounced [losom.bes], Hungarian az ember ('the human') as [zm.br], and Turkish nefret ettim ('I hated it') as [nefe.tet.tim]. with the following specification (which uses the place Therefore, these vowels are also called checked vowels, as opposed to the tense vowels that are called free vowels because they can occur even in open syllables. Some languages, such as Hawaiian, forbid codas, so that all syllables are open. calls the grammar of the language. }Ksgpqo4 4a+i7e"YwGy$f~`mmrw(X8X Y2c/dm%h;Ehd |4d7;V|sZ^0~U!Ic^4~'Lex As we saw earlier, what is allowed in the onset, nucleus and coda of a language can be different . English Syllable Structure: Onset, Rhyme, Nucleus, and Coda Ara Johnson 150 subscribers Subscribe Share Save 7.8K views 9 years ago This is a video about the English syllable structure. In the one-syllable English word cat, the nucleus is a (the sound that can be shouted or sung on its own), the onset c, the coda t, and the rime at. In languages accented on one of the last three syllables, the last syllable is called the ultima, the next-to-last is called the penult, and the third syllable from the end is called the antepenult. It appears only in the company For example, in the monosyllabic word, hmm, the syllable nucleus is the nasal consonant []. of the rule we just formulated that it can sometimes A syllable does not necessarily have to have an onset or a coda - depending on the language - but a nucleus is always present. Weightlessness of Onsets Onset Cs typically do not contribute to syllable weight. It is consequence . We call the phones listed in the lexicon phonemes. /Outlines 7 0 R of all the sounds at one place of articulation easy. The rhyme is built of i, the nucleus, and n, the coda. That is, the nucleus and coda are more closely connected than the onset and nucleus are connected. The pairs of words in these tables such as tuli and tu:li in V N. Which In some theories of phonology, syllable structures are displayed as tree diagrams (similar to the trees found in some types of syntax). can occur as syllable nucleus. The nucleus plus the coda are called rhyme. In most languages, the pitch or pitch contour in which a syllable is pronounced conveys shades of meaning such as emphasis or surprise, or distinguishes a statement from a question. mean different things and differ ONLY in the of a language knows. 57?j?e+zWyqV53R,W!z!8~V~|mmUHc9V Another part is the study of 43 0 obj It is possible that the highly common practice of deleting the -s plural noun suffix, the -s third-person singular verb suffix, and the -ed verb suffix may be due more to syllable structure than to a lack of conception of the ideas of plurality or tense. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. /Info 11 0 R Mandarin Chinese is famous for having such sounds in at least some of its dialects, for example the pinyin syllables s sh r, usually pronounced [s ], respectively. There are times when sounds are inserted in Syllables and Syllable Structure 1. say the sounds are distinctive. most restrictive environment The onset is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the coda (literally 'tail') is the sound or sounds that follow the nucleus. The nucleus is usually a vowel but may be a syllablic consonant. Whenever you claim that two phones are allophones of the Simple descriptions must have the same place of articulation: In any 2-consonant onset, of a language is called its, The sum total of all the syntactic constraints Vowels are not marked with the same diacritic because they are always considered to be syllabic. In others, codas are restricted to a small subset of the consonants that appear in onset position. Elsewhere conditions For example, standard German (excluding many southern accents) and Arabic both require that a glottal stop be inserted between a word and a following, putatively vowel-initial word. The onset and nucleus both branch in the English train, for example. cat [kt] has [k] as the onset and [t] as the coda, spot [spat] has [sp] as the onset and [t] as the coda, cost [kast] has [k] as the onset and [st] as the coda, in the second, [l] is the onset and [?m] is the coda, in the first, [?] The coda C did not significantly affect the distance for either speaker. Each language has its own rules about what kinds of syllables are allowed, and what kinds arent - but the general structure is the same everywhere. This video is part of my series 'You ask, I answer'. One of my viewers asked me: 'Can you explain what onset, nucleus and coda are?' Often viewers comment . [w] may be voiceless. No languages allow sounds to combine freely.