Stop consonants are made with a release at the place of articulation, but no continuation like fricatives. The term suprasegmentals covers phenomena such as stress, syllable structure, tone and segmental length. If segments are one level of representation, suprasegmentals are another. Like segments they may be phonemic or allophonic in nature. In English all stresses are phonemic, but in Spanish only primary stress is phonemic.
Secondary stresses are allophonic.
Together the nucleus and coda form the rhyme . See Metrical Phonology for further details. Syllable weight Syllables may be heavy or light in weight, depending on the structure of its rhyme. The rhyme of a heavy syllable consists minimally of a long vowel or diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two consonants, whether these are in the same or different syllables. The rhyme of a light syllable consists of a single, short vowel.