close to those of‘s’and‘z’. That is, the generalizations concerning the exact phoneticfor mof the plural suffix fall out
very naturally fro mthe si milarity space defined by the distinctive features. Hundreds of phenomena of this sort have
been studied by phonologists. These features play a role in child language acquisition, in historical change, and in
speech errors, as wellas in the descriptionof many dozens of languages. It is a scientific question what the right set of
features is—one that is gradually being settled through phonological and phonetic research.
However, phonological structure is more than just a sequence of phonemes: it is organized into a number of semi-
independent“tiers,”labeled along the right-hand side of the phonology in Fig. 1.1. One is the grouping of speech
sounds intosyllables, indicatedbyσ. Now it could havebeen thatsyllables werejust unstructured strings ofphonemes,
like this:
But in fact there are hierarchical distinctions inside the syllable.A syllable has to have one segment that functions as a
Nucleus—the sonorous core around which the syllable is built. This is designated byNin Fig. 1.1. The nucleus is
usually a vowel, but consonants with the distinctivefeature [+sonorant] can also serve as syllabic nuclei. One of these
is‘l’, which serves as nucleus in the second syllable oflittle, as seen in Fig. 1.1.
The rest of thesyllable's structure is optional. The nucleusand any followingmaterial (called theCoda) are grouped as
the Rime (the part of the syllable that remains the same in rhymes). The material before the nucleus is grouped as the
Onset (the part that remains the same in alliteration). These are indicated in Fig. 1.1 byRandOrespectively. Notice
alsoin Fig. 1.1 thatthesegmentD inlittle(a“flapped”dort)isambisyllabic:itservesbothas codaofonesyllableand as
onset of the next.
Above the syllabic structure is the tier ofprosodic structure, which has two subcomponents. The brackets indicate the
organization of the syllables intointonational phrases; pauses in pronouncing the sentence can occur only between
bracketed units. Within the brackets are thexsof themetrical grid, which indicates the relative stress of syllables.
Syllables with noxsabove the mare unstressed; morexsindicate more stress, so that the wordbigreceives the main
stress of the sentence.
Looking now below the phonological string, wefind the tier of morphophonological structure—the grouping of the
speech strea minto words