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Phonology is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). Whereas phonetics is
about the nature of sounds (or phones) per se,
phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language. For example, /p/ and /b/ in English are distinctive units of sound, (i.e., phonemes.) We can tell this from minimal pairs such as "pin"
and "bin", which mean different things, but differ only in one sound.
Note that the principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of signed languages, with gestures and their relationships as the object of study.
Phonemes and spelling
In some languages the phonemes are directly linked to spelling, i.e., a phoneme is represented by a graphical symbol or a
combination of them, a letter or a letter combination. However in English different phonemes can be spelled the same way ("good"
and "food" have different vowel sounds), so one should use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to
denote phonemes. To indicate that one means names instead of phones the phoneme or
sequence of phonemes is enclosed with '/'s (without the quotes or pluralization; see above examples).
Doing a phoneme inventory
Part of the phonological study of a language involves looking at data (phonetic transcriptions of the speech of native speakers) and trying to deduce what the underlying phonemes are and what
the sound inventory of the language is.
Even though a language may make distinctions between a small number of phonemes, speakers actually produce many more phonetic
sounds. Thus, a phoneme in a particular language can be pronounced in many ways.
Looking for minimal pairs forms part of the research in studying the phoneme inventory of a language. However with this method
it is often not possible to detect all phonemes so other approaches are used as well. A minimal pair is a pair of words, both from the same language, that differ by only a single phoneme, and that
are recognized by speakers as being two different words.
When there is a minimal pair, then those two sounds constitute separate phonemes, otherwise they are called allophones of the same underlying phoneme. For instance, voiceless stops (p,t,k) can be
aspirated. In English, word initial voiceless stops are aspirated, whereas non word-initial voiceless stops aren't aspirated
(This can be seen by putting your fingers right in front of your lips and notice the difference in breathiness as you say 'pin'
and 'spin'). There is no English word 'pin' that starts with an unaspirated p, therefore in English, aspirated [ph]
(the h means aspirated) and unaspirated [p] are allophones of an underlying phoneme /p/.
This is not true of all languages however - both Cantonese
and Thai make the distinction between [p] and [ph], so in
those languages, /p/ and /ph/ are separate phonemes.
Another example... in English, the glides, /l/ and /r/ are two separate phonemes (minimal pair 'life', 'rife'); however, in
many Asian languages the two glides are allophones, and the general rule is that [r] comes before a vowel, and [l] doesn't (e.g.
Seoul, Korea). A native speaker of Korean will tell you that the [l]
in Seoul and the [r] in Korea are in fact the same letter. What happens is that a native Korean speaker's brain uses the
underlying phoneme /l/, and depending on the phonetic context (before a vowel or not) this phoneme gets expressed as either the
[r] sound or the [l] sound. Another Korean speaker will hear both sounds as the underlying phoneme and think of them as the same
sound. This is how different languages can have varying numbers of sounds in their inventory, even though there are a constant
number of distinct phonetic sounds that humans can make.
Generative phonology
Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle presented in The sound pattern of English a view of phonology
where a phonological representation (surface syntactic form) is a structure whose phonetic part is a sequence of units which have
characteristic features. Although there are no phonemes in generative phonology, these units are often loosely referred to as
phonemes, nonetheless. The features describe aspects of articulation and perception, are from a universally fixed set and have
the values + or -. Phonological rules govern how this phonological representation (also called underlying representation) is
transformed into the actual pronunciation (also called surface form.)
Change of a phoneme inventory over time
The particular sounds that a language decides to make distinctions between can change over time as new children learn the
language. At one point, [f] and [v] were allophones in English, and these changed later into separate phonemes. This is one of
the main factors of historical change of languages as described in historical linguistics (another being fast change resulting
from influence by another language, e.g. French influence on English after 1066).
Other languages features studied in phonology
Stress and tone
are also part of phonology. In some languages, stress is non-phonological, e.g. in Finnish or in all ancient Germanic languages, e.g. Old
Norse, Old English and Old High German as well as some modern Germanic languages like Icelandic. However, most modern-day Germanic languages such as German or English, stress is indeed phonologically
distinctive, although there are only few minimal pairs, e.g. /'august/ 'August (the name)' versus /au'gust/ 'August (the month)'
in German, or /kQn'v3:s/(RP) /k@n'v@`s/(GenAm) 'converse (to hold a conversation)' and /'kQnv3:s/(RP) /'kAnv@`s/(GenAm) 'converse
(the opposite of something)' in English.
Development of the field
In 1976 John Goldsmith
introduced autosegmental phonology. The phonological
phenomena are no longer seen as one linear sequence of segments called phonemes or feature combinations but rather as
some parallel sequences of features which reside on multiple tiers.
John McCarthy, Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky developed Optimality Theory, where languages choose a pronunciation of a word that
best satisfies a list of constraints which is ordered by importance: it is
better to not satisfy a less important constraint than a more important one. This is where most current research in phonology is
done.
References
- Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, The sound pattern of English, Harper & Row, New
York: 1968
See also
Alternation (linguistics)
External Links
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