Syllable rime

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

File:Syllable illustration 1.JPG The simplest model of syllable structure divides each syllable into an optional onset, an obligatory nucleus, and an optional coda. The illustration to the right demonstrates this model with the English words cat and sing.

File:Syllable illustration 2.JPG There exist, however, many arguments for a hierarchical relationship, rather than a linear one, between the syllable constituents. This hierarchical model groups the syllable nucleus and coda into an intermediate level, the rime, as shown in the illustration to the right. The hierarchical model accounts for the role that the nucleus+coda constituent plays in verse, and for the distinction between heavy and light syllables, which plays a role in phonological processes such as sound change in Old English scipu and wordu.

Just as the rime branches into the nucleus and coda, the nucleus and coda may each branch into multiple phonemes. The two illustrations below demonstrate English words with branching nucleus and coda, respectively.

File:Syllable illustrations 3and4.JPG

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.