What does phonology study

What is Phonology?

Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production, audition and perception of of speech sounds (called phones),В phonologyВ describes the way sounds function within a given language and operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units. Knowing the sounds of a language is only a small part of phonology. This importance is shown by the fact that you can change one word into another by simply changing one sound. Consider the differences between the words time and dime. The words are identical except for the first sound. [t] and [d] can therefore distinguish words, and are called contrasting sounds. They are distinctive sounds in English, and all distinctive sounds are classified as phonemes.

Minimal Pairs
Minimal pairs are words with different meanings that have the same sounds except for one. These contrasting sounds can either be consonants or vowels. The words pin and bin are minimal pairs because they are exactly the same except for the first sound. The words read and rude are also exactly the same except for the vowel sound. The examples from above, time and dime, are also minimal pairs. In effect, words with one contrastive sound are minimal pairs. Another feature of minimal pairs is overlapping distribution. Sounds that occur in phonetic environments that are identical are said to be in overlapping distribution. The sounds of [ЙЄn] from pin and bin are in overlapping distribution because they occur in both words. The same is true for three and through. The sounds of [Оёr] is in overlapping distribution because they occur in both words as well.

Free Variation
Some words in English are pronounced differently by different speakers. This is most noticeable among American English speakers and British English speakers, as well as dialectal differences. This is evidenced in the ways neither, for example, can be pronounced. American English pronunciation tends to beВ [niГ°Й™r], while British English pronunciation is [najГ°Й™r].

Phones and Allophones
Phonemes are not physical sounds. They are abstract mental representations of the phonological units of a language. Phones are considered to be any single speech sound of which phonemes are made. Phonemes are a family of phones regarded as a single sound and represented by the same symbol. The different phones that are the realization of a phoneme are called allophones of that phoneme. The use of allophones is not random, but rule-governed. No one is taught these rules as they are learned subconsciously when the native language is acquired. To distinguish between a phoneme and its allophones, I will use slashes // to enclose phonemes and brackets [] to enclose allophones or phones. For example, [i] and [Д©] are allophones of the phoneme /i/; [ЙЄ] and [ЙЄМѓ] are allophones of the phoneme /ЙЄ/.

Complementary Distribution
If two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, they are said to be in complementary distribution. These sounds cannot occur in minimal pairs and they cannot change the meaning of otherwise identical words. If you interchange the sounds, you will only change the pronunciation of the words, not the meaning. Native speakers of the language regard the two allophones as variations of the same sound. To hear this, start to say the word cool (your lips should be pursed in anticipation of /u/ sound), but then say kill instead (with your lips still pursed.) Your pronunciation of kill should sound strange because cool and kill are pronounced with different allophones of the phoneme /k/.

Nasalized vowels are allophones of the same phoneme in English. Take, for example, the sounds in bad and ban. The phoneme is /Г¦/, however the allophones are [Г¦] and [Г¦Мѓ]. Yet in French, nasalized vowels are not allophones of the same phonemes. They are separate phonemes. The words beau [bo] and bon [bГµ] are not in complementary distribution because they are minimal pairs and have contrasting sounds. Changing the sounds changes the meaning of the words. This is just one example of differences between languages.

Phonological Rules
Assimilation: sounds become more like neighboring sounds, allowing for ease of articulation or pronunciation; such as vowels are nasalized before nasal consonants
— Harmony: non-adjacent vowels become more similar by sharing a feature or set of features (common in Finnish)
— Gemination: sound becomes identical to an adjacent sound
— Regressive Assimilation: sound on left is the target, and sound on right is the trigger

Dissimilation: sounds become less like neighboring sounds; these rules are quite rare, but one example in English is [fЙЄfОё] becoming [fЙЄft] (/f/ and /Оё/ are both fricatives, but /t/ is a stop)

Epenthesis: insertion of a sound, e.g. Latin «homre» became Spanish «hombre»
— Prothesis: insertion of vowel sound at beginning of word
— Anaptyxis: vowel sound with predictable quality is inserted word-internally
— Paragoge: insertion of vowel sound at end of word
— Excrescence: consonant sound inserted between other consonants (also called stop-intrusion)

Deletion: deletion of a sound; e.g. French word-final consonants are deleted when the next word begins with a consonant (but are retained when the following word begins with a vowel)
— Aphaeresis: vowel sound deleted at beginning of word
— Syncope: vowel sound is deleted word-internally
— Apocope: vowel sound deleted at end of word

Metathesis: reordering of phonemes; in some dialects of English, the word asked is pronounced [Г¦ks]; children’s speech shows many cases of metathesis such as aminal for animal

Lenition: consonant changes to a weaker manner of articulation; voiced stop becomes a fricative, fricative becomes a glide, etc.

Palatalization: sound becomes palatal when adjacent to a front vowel Compensatory Lengthening: sound becomes long as a result of sound loss, e.g. Latin «octo» became Italian «otto»

Hopefully, you can determine which consonants produce which sounds. In the nouns, /s/ is added after voiceless consonants, and /z/ is added after voiced consonants. /Й™z/ is added after sibilants. For the verbs, /t/ is added after voiceless consonants, and /d/ is added after voiced consonants. /Й™d/ is added after alveolar stops. The great thing about this is that no one ever taught you this in school. But thanks to linguistics, you now know why there are different sounds (because of assimiliation rules, the consonants become more like their neighboring consonants.)

Writing Rules
A general phonological rule is A → B / D __ E (said: A becomes B when it occurs between D and E) Other symbols in rule writing include: C = any obstruent, V = any vowel, Ø = nothing, # = word boundary, ( ) = optional, and < >= either/or. A deletion rule is A → Ø / E __ (A is deleted when it occurs after E) and an insertion rule is Ø → A / E __ (A is inserted when it occurs after E).

Alpha notation is used to collapse similar assimilation rules into one. C в†’ [О‘ voice] / __ [О‘ voice] (An obstruent becomes voiced when it occurs before a voiced obstruent AND an obstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a voiceless obstruent.) Similarly, it can be used for dissimilation rules too. C в†’ [-О‘ voice] / __ [О‘ voice] (An obstruent becomes voiced when it occurs before a voiceless obstruent AND an obstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a voiced obstruent.) Gemination rules are written as C1C2 в†’ C2C2 (for example, pd в†’ dd)

TheВ Maximality ConditionВ states that onsets are as large as possible up to the well-formedness rules of a language. Onsets are always preferred over codas when syllabifying words. There are also constraints that state the maximum number of consonants between two vowels is four; onsets and codas have two consonants maximally; and onsets and codas can be bigger only at the edges of words.

Phonology: Definition and Observations

Roy Scott/Getty Images

Phonology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of speech sounds with reference to their distribution and patterning. The adjective for the term is «phonological.» A linguist who specializes in phonology is known as a pathologist. The word is pronounced «fah-NOL-ah-gee.» The term derives from the Greek, «sound» or «voice.»

In «Fundamental Concepts in Phonology,» Ken Lodge observes that phonology «is about differences of meaning signaled by sound.» As discussed below, the boundaries between the fields of phonology and phonetics are not always sharply defined.

Observations on Phonology

«One way to understand the subject matter of phonology is to contrast it with other fields within linguistics. A very brief explanation is that phonology is the study of sound structures in language, which is different from the study of sentence structures (syntax), word structures (morphology), or how languages change over time (historical linguistics). But this is insufficient. An important feature of the structure of a sentence is how it is pronounced—its sound structure. The pronunciation of a given word is also a fundamental part of the structure of a word. And certainly the principles of pronunciation in a language are subject to change over time. So phonology has a relation to numerous domains of linguistics.»

– David Odden, Introducing Phonology, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2013

The Aim of Phonology

«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.»

– David Crystal, How Language Works. Overlook Press, 2005

«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.»

– David Crystal, The Cambridge Encylopedia of the English Language, 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 2003

Phoneme Systems

«[P]honology 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.»

– Geoffrey S. Nathan, Phonology: A Cognitive Grammar Introduction. John Benjamins, 2008

The Phonetics-Phonology Interface

«Phonetics interfaces with phonology in three ways. First, phonetics defines distinctive features. Second, phonetics explains many phonological patterns. These two interfaces constitute what has come to be called the ‘substantive grounding’ of phonology (Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994). Finally, phonetics implements phonological representations.

«The number and depth of these interfaces is so great that one is naturally moved to ask how autonomous phonetics and phonology are from one another and whether one can be largely reduced to the other. The answers to these questions in the current literature could not differ more. At one extreme, Ohala (1990b) argues that there is in fact no interface between phonetics and phonology because the latter can largely if not completely be reduced to the former. At the opposite extreme, Hale & Reiss (2000b) argue for excluding phonetics entirely from phonology because the latter is about computation, while the former is about something else. Between these extremes is a large variety of other answers to these questions. «

– John Kingston, «The Phonetics-Phonology Interface.» The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, ed. by Paul de Lacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007

Phonemics and Phonology

«Phonemics is the study of phonemes in their various aspects, i.e. their establishment, description, occurrence, arrangement, etc. Phonemes fall under two categories, segmental or linear phonemes and suprasegmental or non-linear phonemes. The term ‘phonemics,’ with the above-mentioned sense attached to it, was widely used in the heyday of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics in America, in particular from the 1930s to the 1950s, and continues to be used by present-day post-Bloomfieldians. Note in this connection that Leonard Bloomsfield (1887-1949) used the term ‘phonology,’ not ‘phonemics,’ and talked about primary phonemes and secondary phonemes while using the adjectival form ‘phonemic’ elsewhere. The term ‘phonology,’ not ‘phonemics,’ is generally used by contemporary linguists of other schools.»

– Tsutomu Akamatsu, «Phonology.» The Linguistics Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., edited by Kirsten Malmkjaer. Routledge, 2004

All About Linguistics

What is Phonology?

Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across languages. Put more formally, phonology is the study of the categorical organisation of speech sounds in languages; how speech sounds are organised in the mind and used to convey meaning. In this section of the website, we will describe the most common phonological processes and introduce the concepts of underlying representations for sounds versus what is actually produced, the surface form.

Phonology can be related to many linguistic disciplines, including psycholinguistics, cognitive science, sociolinguistics and language acquisition. Principles of phonology can also be applied to treatments of speech pathologies and innovations in technology. In terms of speech recognition, systems can be designed to translate spoken data into text. In this way, computers process the language like our brains do. The same processes that occur in the mind of a human when producing and receiving language occur in machines. One example of machines decoding language is the popular intelligence system, Siri.

Phonology vs. Phonetics – the key differences

Phonology is concerned with the abstract, whereas phonetics is concerned with the physical properties of sounds. In phonetics we can see infinite realisations, for example every time you say a ‘p’ it will slightly different than the other times you’ve said it. However, in phonology all productions are the same sound within the language’s phoneme inventory, therefore even though every ‘p’ is produced slightly different every time, the actual sound is the same. This highlights a key difference between phonetic and phonology as even though no two ‘p’s are the same, they represent the same sound in the language.

(Phonology vs phonetics from inglesdocencia)

Also refer to the Phonetics page to get a better idea of the differences and similarities between these two related areas of linguistics.

Phonemes V. Allophones

Phonemes are the meaningfully different sound units in a language (the smallest units of sound). For example, ‘pat’ and ‘bat’ differ in their first phoneme: the “p” and “b”. Vowels are also phonemes, so “pat” and “pet” differ by a phoneme, too (But phonemes don’t always match up with spelling!). When two words differ by a single phoneme they are known as a minimal pair.
Allophones are different ways to pronounce a phoneme based on its environment in a word. For example, the two allophones of /l/ in “little” are actually produced slightly differently, and the second one sounds slightly deeper. These different “l”s always occur in different environments in words, which is known as “complementary distribution”.

Phonology looks at many different things…

All About Linguistics

Every language has an organised sound system. Phonology is concerned with processes in the mind, determining the rules of a language and how we organise, study and form sounds in speech.

We each have tacit knowledge* of our native language. This tacit knowledge allows us to adhere to the rules of the relevant sound system.

*Tacit Knowledge = When you know something without understanding how or why you came to ‘know it’.

For example: if you were asked to make up a word you would be more likely to say something like “plond” rather than “plofw”. This is because the underlying knowledge you have of the English language tells you that two consonants such as ‘fw’ cannot appear next to each other at the end of a word.

Identifying Phonemes

Another example that is found in English is /l/ being produced as a ‘clear’ [l] or a ‘dark’ [ɫ]. Which realisation occurs is a result of allophonic rules. They never occur in the same place in the word, [l] is always at the start of the word, and [ɫ] is always at the end of the word. They are also phonetically similar, they are both lateral approximants, therefore, they are allophones of a single phoneme /l/. You can tell a difference between the first and second ‘l’s in words such as ‘little’ and ‘ladle’.

Minimal pair test (also known as contrastive pairs)

Phoneme Sequences – Syllable structures

A syllable is a unit of phonological organisation which is larger than the sound segment (phoneme) and smaller than the word. In the middle of the syllable there is usually a vowel, and then consonants arrange themselves around the vowel.

Just like our brains have abstract rules that determine how sounds are combined, there is an abstract process called syllabification which organises sound segments into syllables.

Multi-tiered phonological theory

This is how syllables are structured.

The formal names for the parts of a syllable are the onset and the rhyme, which contains the nucleus and the coda. The symbol to signify a syllable is ‘σ’, and a full word, ‘W’.

The nucleus is the central and compulsory component of the syllable, and is usually a vowel. However, the nucleus can also be a consonant – this is called a syllabic consonant and in English this can occur with /l/ and /n/ in words such as ‘saddle’ and ‘button’, which would be produced like [s] ‘sad l ’ and [b] ‘but n ’ respectively. The nucleus can be non-branching (a short vowel) or branching (a monophthong or diphthong – see phonetics ).

The coda is any consonant which follows the nucleus, and is the closing part of the syllable. Codas can be absent, such as in “pea”, non-branching (1 consonant), as in “pin” or branching (more than one consonant) as in “drink”. If a syllable does not have a coda, it is called an open syllable. A syllable with a coda is a closed syllable.

The rhyme consists of the nucleus and coda.

The onset is any consonant which precedes the nucleus within the same syllable. Like codas, onsets can also be absent, non-branching or branching.

Phonological Processes

Assimilation

Dissimilation

Coalescence

Elision/Deletion

Liaison

Epenthesis/Insertion

Lenition (Weakening)

Plosive > Fricative > Approximant > Vowel > zero

Aspirated > voiceless > voiced

A voiceless aspirated plosive is the strongest category on the scale as it differs the most from the qualities of a vowel whereas voiced approximants are weaker due to being more similar. For example in Spanish, /d/ becomes [ð] between two vowels, showing the transition from plosives to the weaker category of fricatives.

What does phonology study

There is a variety of ways of applying phonology.

Other than looking at specific languages, dialects and theories, phonology is also applied in many vocations and to an array of technology.

This technology converts the spoken word into text. There are a variety of different machines that use different technology to do it. The most basic is represented in my diagram below.

This technology can be used in health care, business and even legal transcriptions. The most obvious use is on items such as phones where we can speak into the phone and it writes a text for us.

This is where a machine is used to artificially produce human speech. Such machines are judged on their quality by how close to human speech they actually sound. The most famous person that uses a speech synthesizer is Stephen Hawking.

There are a variety of speech synthesizers and they get complicated. The simplest is a text to phoneme conversion →This is where the machine stores a dictionary containing all the words of the language with their correct pronunciations, so when the word is written in, the machine converts it to the spoken word.

(For more information see Phonetics)

All these three are closely related to phonology and phonological processes. So to examine and understand people with this disorder you need a good understanding of phonology.

This links to the ‘language acquisition’ part of the website. Phonology plays a huge part in speech production and therefore is used to examine and analyse this stage in a child’s development. We can analyse how children formulate language and devise phonological theories of the connection between what happens in the brain and the sounds they produce.

Now you have read through all the sections on phonology why don’t you Check Your Knowledge!