Sonority hierarchy

The concept of sonority assumes that phone, belonging to different sound classes also differ in their sonority, so their sound abundance. This feature is brought to the definition of a phonological syllable: In a sequence of phones the respective Sonoritätsgipfel regarded as the syllable nucleus, while the Sonoritätsminima mark a syllable boundary. Thus, the sonority falls within a syllable to syllable edges out from, and both the approach and the syllable coda have a lower sonority than the syllable nucleus.

The rise in sonority for the syllable nucleus towards linguistic universals is considered, since it can be applied to the great majority of the investigated languages. An explanation for this observation is that the division of the speech signal is facilitated into syllables by the sequence of sections of high and low sonority.

Ranking of Sonoritätsklassen

The sonority runs from the plosives with increasing sonority toward the vowels:

In the following example, the different sonority of the various phone is represented by the height of the beam above it; the numerical values ​​can be found below this bar. The syllable boundary, characterized by the point found at the Sonoritätsminimum after the first occurrence of the sound [ n].

History

The approach to describe the sonority syllables is already well over a century old. Eduard Sievers led 1881 the sonority of the sound classes to explain by means of the gradation of sonority ( sonority ) the segmental syllable structure. Later the principle was moving into the phonology and is found in the markedness constraints of Optimality Theory again.

Counter-examples

Although the sonority has been described as universal, found in many languages ​​syllables whose structure does not match the sonority. In German we have such counter-examples: in the word stocking [ ʃ ͜ tʀʊmp͡f ] is available both in initial position a fricative [ ʃ ] before a plosive [t ] as well as in final a fricative [ f] for a plosive [ p]. Nevertheless, it can be said that the construction of a syllable prefers the sonority follows.

Swell

• Sievers, E. ( 1881): Principles of phonetics as an introduction to the study of the phonology of Indo-European languages. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.
• Vennemann, T. ( 1982): "On the syllable structure of standard German ", in: Vennemann, T. ( ed.): syllables, segments, accents. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• Vennemann, T. ( 1986): Recent developments in phonology. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Vennemann, T. ( 1988): Preference Laws for Syllable Structure and the Explanation of Sound Change. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Luck, H. ( Eds ) (2000 ): Metzler Lexikon Sprache. Stuttgart: Metzler.
• My Schaefer, J. (1998): syllable and sonority in language and brain, Dissertation at Ruhr- University Bochum, pp. 26-76

• Phonetics
• Phonology