Part
of a word containing a vowel sound and pronounced as a 'unit.' If
you beat out the rhythm of a word, the number of beats will show the
number of syllables in that word. For example, 'cat' has one syllable.
'car-pen-ter' has three syllables. As indicated above, in English a
syllable normally contains a vowel, however there are three
consonants which can act as syllabic consonants: /m/ /n/ and /l/ as
in bottom,
button
and bottle.
Some speakers move straight into these sounds without articulating an
intervening vowel. Syllabic consonants are transcribed with a dot
under the phonetic symbol, so you may see, for example, the word freckle transcribed as
/'frekəl/ or /'frekl̩/.