vowelsyllable

Vowelsyllable is a term used in phonology to describe a syllable that consists solely of a vowel sound, with no consonant onset or coda. In the traditional syllable model, a syllable typically has an onset, a nucleus, and an optional coda; a vowelsyllable has an empty onset and an empty coda, and its nucleus is a vowel.

In practical terms, a vowelsyllable is a nucleus-only unit. The vowel itself may be a monophthong or a diphthong treated as a single syllabic nucleus. Because there is no consonantal support, such syllables are inherently open and stand as standalone units, though they can occur at the end of a word in some languages or as a word by themselves.

Cross-linguistically, languages differ in how often and where vowel-only syllables occur. Some languages frequently allow vowel-only words or moras, such as pronouns or interjections in English (for example, I or a) or vowel-heavy exclamations in other languages. In many languages, vowels appear as the nucleus of syllables that do have onsets or codas, but pure V syllables still arise in loanwords, interjections, or isolated vowels.

In notation and analysis, a vowelsyllable is represented as a syllable with the nucleus symbol only, often indicated as V within a canonical syllable structure. While many languages predominantly employ syllables with onsets or codas, vowelsyllables provide a clean case for studying syllable structure, vowel quality, and prosodic features such as stress and tone carried on a simple vowel nucleus.

See also: syllable, nucleus, onset, coda, open syllable, vowel.