Phonology

Definition of Phonology
	Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.

The sound system involves

• the actual pronunciation of words, which can be broken up into the smallest units of pronunciation, known as a segment or a phoneme. ( The words pat, chat and fat have different phonemes at the beginning, and so phonemes contrast with each other to produce different words.)
• prosody – pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm – the ‘music’ of speech. (Other terms used are non-segmental phonology or supra-segmental phonology.)

Diachronic (historical) phonology examines and constructs theories about the changes and modifications in speech sounds and sound systems over a period of time. For example, it is concerned with the process by which the English words “sea” and “see,” once pronounced with different vowel sounds (as indicated by the spelling), have come to be pronounced alike today. Synchronic (descriptive) phonology investigates sounds at a single stage in the development of a language, to discover the sound patterns that can occur. For example, in English, nt and dm can appear within or at the end of words (“rent,” “admit”) but not at the beginning.

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.
	Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an interacting hierarchy of levels in linguistics:

Phonological Rules

Phonotactics

Phonotactics are the rules that govern how phonemes can be arranged. Look at the following lists of made-up words:

• Pfilg
• Dchbin
• Riaubg
• Streelling
• Mard
• Droib