[THE APPRENTICE]

Dear members and friends:

I° - According to what I have learned about the division of words into syllables or syllable-splitting rules (Syllabification):

A word whose first syllable contains a short vowel sound in it ─a closed syllable─, this syllable must end with a consonant sound. It seems to me that the primary stress has something to do with this rule, too; for example:

PROCEDURE (pro-ced-ure) /prəˈsidʒə(r)/; PLEASURE (pleas-ure) /ˈplɛʒə(r)/; SCHEDULE (sched-ule) /ˈskɛdʒul/; ELISION (e-lis-ion) /ɪˈlɪʒən/.

Prefixes and suffixes are grammatical units that keep their syntactical structures in the syllable-splitting process.

UNCOUNTABLE (UN-count-a-ble); CONVERSATION (con-ver-sa-TION)

II° - When the /z/ sound and /j/ sound meet together from separate syllables in a word, they assimilate the /ʒ/ sound. This same phonetic aspect happens when /d/ and /j/ meet together asimilating the /dʒ/ sound; /t/ and /j/ also turn into /tʃ/ as in PICTURE (pic-ture) /ˈpɪktʃər/.

QUESTION:

Is this the whys and wherefores for those words above assimilate the aforementioned /ʒ/ /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ sounds?

OBSERVATION:

III° - Nearly all of the words above have a short vowel followed by a /j/ sound sound, except PROCEDURE; /i:/ sound is not a short vowel. All the words have the primary stress in that same syllable; that's why I think primary stress has something to do with it also.

I seem ENDURE (en-dure) /ɛnˈdʊə(r)/ /ɪnˈdjʊə(r)/ does not assimilate the /dʒ/ sound because /d/ and /j/ are part of the same syllable; they do not meet together.

ANALYSIS:

IV° - According to one of the syllabification rules, a syllable never ends with a short vowel sound; must end with a consonant one. The word PROCEDURE (pro-ced-ure) has its first short vowel sound in the second syllable CED /ˈsid/ followed by the syllable or suffix URE /jə(r)/. When a syllable ending with a phoneme /d/ is followed by another one beginning with /j/, both phonemes assimilate the /dʒ/ phoneme or sound.

The word PROCEDURE has a Schwa sound in its first syllable PRO /prə/ thus its phonetic transcription being as follows:

/prəˈsidʒə(r)/

I ask for your valuable comments in this issue.