Which term refers to the pauses or breaks between syllables?

• A. Vowel
• B. Juncture
• C. Morpheme
• D. Allomorphs

Answer: (B)

Think about how speech is chunked into pieces and how we signal the boundary between those pieces. The pauses or breaks between syllables are called juncture. Juncture can be a light pause, a breath, or a momentary separation that marks where one syllable ends and the next begins. It matters because it helps listeners parse rhythm and meaning; for example, hearing “I scream” versus “ice cream” depends on that boundary between sounds.

This sits apart from vowels, which are the sounds produced with the vocal cords shaping the voice, and from morphemes, the smallest units of meaning, or from allomorphs, the variant forms a morpheme can take. So the term for the pauses between syllables is juncture.