My intro linguistics class was doing a demonstration of how to break up single syllables into their vowel trees. We came up with three different interrpretations and were looking for more opinions.
For the word strawberry we concluded that in our collective English dialects it would most likely be spelled as [stɹa/ɔbɛɹi], with some variation between the vowel [a] or [ɔ]. Where we ran into trouble was where to break up the syllables. We all agreed it had three syllables.
One group thought it was broken up as [stɹa/ɔ] [bɛ] [ɹi]. Broken down as [stɹ] as the onset to [a/ɔ], [bɛ] with [b] as the onset to the rhyme [ɛ], and [ɹi] with the onset of [ɹ] of the rhyme [i].
One group thought it was [stɹa/ɔ] [bɛɹ] [i] with [stɹ] as the onset to [a/ɔ], [b] as the onset of the nucleus [ɛ] with a coda of [ɹ], and [i] as a separate nucleus.
And one group thought it was [stɹa/ɔ] [bɛɹ] [ɹi] with [stɹ] as the onset to [a/ɔ], [b] as the onset of the nucleus [ɛ] with a coda of [ɹ], and [ɹ] as the onset of the rhyme [i].
Here is a illustration for further clarification.
Any insights would be appreciated!