Syllable rime
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In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda.
"Rime" and "rhyme" are variants of the same word, but the rarer form "rime" is sometimes used to mean specifically "syllable rime" to differentiate it from the concept of poetic rhyme. This distinction is not made by some linguists and does not appear in most dictionaries.
Syllable structure
The segmental structure of a syllable may begin with an optional onset or initial (shengmu), followed by a compulsory rime.
- syllable: C1(C2)V1(V2)(C3)(C4) = onset: C1(C2) + rime: V1(V2)(C3)(C4)
- syllable: V1(V2)(C3)(C4) = onset: Ø (null) + rime: V1(V2)(C3)(C4)
- (C = consonant, V = vowel, optional components are in parentheses.)
The rime is usually the portion of a syllable from the first vowel to the end. For example, /æt/ is the rime of all of the words at, sat, and flat. However, the nucleus does not necessarily need to be a vowel in some languages. For instance, the rime of the second syllables of the words bottle and fiddle is just /l/, a liquid consonant.
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