Phonology

                             PHONOLOGY

1.      Definition of  Phonology

          Phonology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of speech sounds with reference to their distribution and patterning. Adjective: phonological. A linguist who specializes in phonology is known as a phonologist. Etymologically, Phonology from the Greek, means "sound, voice".

          phonology is the study of how sound affects the meaning, reception, and interpretation of texts.

phonology is more focused on how speech sound change and behave when in a syllable, word, or sentence, as opposed to when spoken in isolation. For example, the final 's' sounds in 'helps' and 'crabs' follow a simple-to-understand phonological rule. In these words, the 's' sound changes depending on what speech sound immediately precedes it.

• Helps
• Crabs
• Sits
• Looks
• Words
• Gloves

         The aim of phonology is to discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages and to explain the variations that occur. We begin by analyzing an individual language to determine which sound units are used and which patterns they form--the language's sound system. We then compare the properties of different sound systems, and work out hypotheses about the rules underlying the use of sounds in particular groups of languages. Ultimately, phonologists want to make statements that apply to all languages.

         Whereas phonetics is the study of all possible speech sounds, phonology studies the way in which a language's speakers systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express meaning. There is a further way of drawing the distinction. No two speakers have anatomically identical vocal tracts, and thus no one produces sounds in exactly the same way as anyone else. Yet when using our language we are able to discount much of this variation, and focus on only those sounds, or properties of sound, that are important for the communication of meaning. We think of our fellow speakers as using the 'same' sounds, even though acoustically they are not. Phonology is the study of how we find order within the apparent chaos of speech sounds. When we talk about the 'sound system' of English, we are referring to the number of phonemes which are used in a language and to how they are organized.

Phonology is not only about phonemes and allophones. Phonology also concerns itself with the principles governing the phoneme systems--that is, with what sounds languages 'like' to have, which sets of sounds are most common (and why) and which are rare (and also why). It turns out that there are prototype-based explanations for why the phoneme system of the languages of the world have the sounds that they do, with physiological/acoustic/perceptual explanations for the preference for some sounds over others. 

The phonological system of a language includes

·         an inventory of sounds and their features, and

·         rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.

Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.

      

2.      Models of phonology

·         In classical phonemics, phonemes and their possible combinations are central.

·         In standard generative phonology, distinctive features are central. A stream of speech is portrayed as linear sequence of discrete sound-segments. Each segment is composed of simultaneously occurring features.

·         In non-linear models of phonology, a stream of speech is represented as multidimensional, not simply as a linear sequence of sound segments. These non-linear models grew out of generative phonology:

v  autosegmental phonology

v  metrical phonology

v  lexical phonology