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(The o in the second syllable makes the / ə / sound because it is an unstressed syllable.) Open syllables are syllables in which a vowel appears at the end of the syllable. The vowel will say its long sound. In the word basin, ba is an open syllable and therefore says / b eɪ /. Diphthongs are linguistic elements that fuse two adjacent vowel ...
A coda-less syllable of the form V, CV, CCV, etc. (V = vowel, C = consonant) is called an open syllable or free syllable, while a syllable that has a coda (VC, CVC, CVCC, etc.) is called a closed syllable or checked syllable.
The lengthening still survives in Modern English and accounts, for example, for the vowel difference between "staff" and the alternative plural "staves" (Middle English staf vs. stāves, with open-syllable lengthening in the latter word). The effects of open-syllable lengthening and trisyllabic laxing often led to differences in the stem vowel ...
An example in Latin: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit (Aeneid 1.1-2)The first syllable of the first word (arma) is heavy ("long by position") because it contains a short vowel (the A) followed by more than one consonant (R and then M)—and if not for the consonants coming after it, it would be light.
Thus words like supra and matrix are syllabified as su.pra and ma.trix, and the first syllable of both words is open; likewise a.cro.po.lis, di.plo.ma, de.tri.tus. The sequence /kw/ (spelled qu) also does not close the preceding syllable; i.e., one syllabifies re.qui.em and not req.ui.em. Sequences of obstruents followed by l are less consistent.
Later, with the gradual loss of unstressed endings, many such syllables ceased to be open, but the vowel remained long. For example, the word name originally had two syllables, the first being open, so the /a/ was lengthened; later, the final vowel was dropped, leaving a closed syllable with a long vowel.
Lexical words are somewhat rarer in English and are generally restricted to a single syllable: eye, awe, owe, and in non-rhotic accents air, ore, err. Vowel-only words of more than one syllable are generally foreign loans, such as ai (two syllables: / ˈ ɑː i /) for the maned sloth, or proper names, such as Iowa (in some accents: / ˈ aɪ ...
In an amphibrachic pair, each word is an amphibrach and has the second syllable stressed and the first and third syllables unstressed. attainder, remainder; autumnal, columnal; concoction, decoction (In GA, these rhyme with auction; there is also the YouTube slang word obnoxion, meaning something that is obnoxious.) distinguish, extinguish