Page:Dictionary of aviation.djvu/17

 PREFACE 1 1

sounds, especially in the case of vowel sounds, is indicated by the length^mcrk placed just after the letter representing the sound in question, as in calm (ka:m), law (lc:), air (e:z), fan^blast ('f3en,bta:st).

Syllabication and Stress. A syllable is a prominence of sonorousness or loudness : a wave, as it were, of sonenty, rising above the general level of speech.

A syllable may be cald static when at its inception the force of the breth^impuls remains the same as it was just be- fore, or changes only at the same rate at which it was before changing.

A syllable may be cald dynamic when at its inception the force of the breth^impuls is suddenly increast. The first or initial syllable of any utterance is of course a dynamic syl- lable.

Between a dynamic syllable and a static syllable, as in the word better ('betaz), mentiond above, or between two con- tiguous static syllables, as in the word logically ('ledsika-li), there is no point of division lying between two sounds of different quality. In so far as there exists any definit peint of syllabic division in such cases, it must always be located within the limits of a sound of minimum sonority. In the word better, this sound is the [t] ; in logically, the [d] or the [k]. These sounds beleng to neither syllable more than to the other, but each one of them constitutes a nexus in which the two syllables meet.

Every dynamic syllable, en the other hand, must always have a definit starting-point, located either (i) at the begin- ning of the word or utterance, as, in the word better ('betaz), at the beginning of the [b] ; (2) between two medial sounds of different quality, as, in the word baker ('bee-kaz), at the beginning of the [k], and, in the word coolie ('kou-li), at the beginning of the [I] ; or (3) within the limits of some medial sound which, were there no new brethzimpuls, would be a single sound, as, in the word ratftrap ('zae^tjaep), at the be- ginning of the second [t], and, in the word coolly ('koul-li), at the beginning of the second [I]. When a (second) new dy-

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