many English syllables are	weak
stress	a major factor in determining whether a syllable will be strong or weak
any strong syllable will have as its peak	one of the vowel phonemes (or possibly a triphthong), but not ə
weak syllables can only have four types of peak a), b)	a) the vowel ə, b) a close front unrounded vowel in the general area if i: and I
weak syllables can only have four types of peak c), d)	c) a close back rounded vowel in the general area of u: and ʊ, d) a syllabic consonant
the vowel in a weak syllable tends to be	shorter, of lower intensity and different in quality; father - the 2 weak,shorter, less loud than 1
a syllabic consonant	bottle; is a consonant which either forms a syllable on its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable
ə is always associated with	weak syllables
ə in quality	mid, central, described as lax (not articulated with much energy)
the quality of this vowel is not	always the same, but the variation is not important
not all .... contain ə	weak syllables
spelt with ‘a’	strong pronunciation would have ӕ; attend
spelt with ‘ar’	strong pronunciation would have ɑ:; particular
adjectival endings spelt ‘ate’	strong pronunciation – eI; intimate
spelt with ‘o’	strong pronunciation – ɒ; tomorrow
spelt with ‘or’	strong pronunciation - ɔ:; forget
spelt with ‘e’	strong pronunciation – e; settlement
spelt with ‘er’	strong pronunciation - ʒ:; perhaps
spelt with ‘u’	strong pronunciation - ʌ; Autumn
spelt with ‘ough’	thorough
spelt with ‘ous’	gracious
commonly found in weak syllables are	close front and close back vowels
close front vowel	in the general region of i: and I
close back rounded vowel	in the general region of u: and ʊ
we find i occurring a)	a) in word-final position in words with final ‘y’, ‘ey'; happier
we find i occurring b)	b) in a prefix ‘re’, ‘pre’, ‘de’ if it precedes a vowel and is unstressed; react
we find i occurring c)	in the suffixes ‘iate’, ‘ious’ when they have two syllables; appreciate
we find i occurring d)	in unstressed: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘we’, ‘me’, ‘be’ and ‘the’ when it precedes a vowel
weak syllables with close back rounded vowels	u in 'you', 'to', 'into', 'do'; evacuation
syllabic l	the most noticeable example of the English syllabic consonant
syllabic l occurs	after another consonant, and the way it is produced depends to some extent to the nature of that con
if the preceding consonant is alveolar	the articulatory movement from the preceding consonant to the syllabic l is guite simple; bottle
lateral release	sides of tongue, which are raised for the preceding consonant, are loweredToAllowAirToEscapeOverThem
we found syllabic l (1)	a word ending with one or more consonant letters followed by ‘le’
we found syllabic l (2)	with alveolar consonant preceding (cattle); with non-alveolar consonant preceding (couple)
‘bottle’ – ‘bottling’	such words usually lose their final letter ‘e’ when a suffix beginning with a vowel is attached
similar words not derived in this way do not have ...	the syllabic l
weak syllables + ən ...	are uncommon except in initial position in the words; tonight
medially and finally we find much more commonly a syllabic n in words...	threaten, threatening
syllabic n is most common after ...	alveolar plosives and fricatives
in the case of t and d followed by n ...	the plosive is nasally released by lowering the soft palate
after r or v, syllabic n	more common than ən (except in word-initial syllables); seven sevn
after bilabial consonants syllabic n	we can consider it equally acceptable to pronounce them with syllabic n or with ən ; happen
syllabic n after non-alveolar consonants	in words where the syllable following a velar consonant is spelt ‘an’ or ‘on’ (‘toboggan’, ‘wagon’)
m, ŋ	both occur as syllabic, but only as a result of assimilation and elision; happen
where non-syllabic r is also acceptable	history; more than one consonant precedes the weak syllable in question
where ər is also acceptable	only one consonant preceding; buttering
minimal pairs	in which a difference in meaning appears to depend on whether a particular r is syllabic or not
combinations of syllabic consonants	national; literal; vistionary; vistionary’