Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages.

It has traditionally focused largely on study of the systems of phonemes in particular languages (and therefore used to be also called phonemics, or phonematics), but it may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word (including syllable, onset and rhyme, articulatory gestures, articulatory features, mora, etc.) or at all levels of language where sound is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning. Phonology also includes the study of equivalent organizational systems in sign languages. The word phonology (as in the phonology of English) can also refer to the phonological system (sound system) of a given language. This is one of the fundamental systems which a language is considered to comprise, li e its synta! and its vocabulary. Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics. "hile phonetics concerns the physical production, acoustic transmission and perception of the sounds of speech,#$%#&% phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages to encode meaning. 'or many linguists, phonetics belongs to descriptive linguistics, and phonology to theoretical linguistics, although establishing the phonological system of a language is necessarily an application of theoretical principles to analysis of phonetic evidence. (ote that this distinction was not always made, particularly before the development of the modern concept of phoneme in the mid &)th century. *ome subfields of modern phonology have a crossover with phonetics in descriptive disciplines such as psycholinguistics and speech perception, resulting in specific areas li e articulatory phonology or laboratory phonology.

Contents
+ 1 Derivation and definitions + 2 Development of phonology + 3 Analysis of phonemes + 4 Other topics in phonology + 5 See also + 6 Notes + 7 i!liography + " #$ternal lin%s

Derivation and definitions

The word phonology comes from ,ree -./0, phn, 1voice, sound,1 and the suffi! -logy (which is from ,ree 23456, lgos, 1word, speech, sub7ect of discussion1). 8efinitions of the term vary. (i olai Trubetz oy in Grundzge der Phonologie ($9:9) defines phonology as 1the study of sound pertaining to the system of language,1 as opposed to phonetics, which is 1the study of sound pertaining to the act of speech.1 (the distinction between language and speech being basically *aussure;s distinction between langue and parole) #:% <ore recently, =ass ($99>) writes that phonology refers broadly to the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language, while in more narrow terms, 1phonology proper is concerned with the function, behavior and organization of sounds as linguistic items.1 #$% ?ccording to @lar et al. (&))A) it

means the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spo en human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use.#B%

Development of phonology
The history of phonology may be traced bac to the Ashtadhyayi, the *ans rit grammar composed by Pini in the Bth century C@. In particular the Shiva Sutras, an au!iliary te!t to the Ashtadhyayi, introduces what can be considered a list of the phonemes of the *ans rit language, with a notational system for them that is used throughout the main te!t, which deals with matters of morphology, synta! and semantics. The Polish scholar Dan Caudouin de @ourtenay (together with his former student <i oEa7 Fruszews i) introduced the concept of the phoneme in $>AG, and his wor , though often unac nowledged, is considered to be the starting point of modern phonology. He also wor ed on the theory of phonetic alternations (what is now called allophony and morphophonology), and had a significant influence on the wor of 'erdinand de *aussure.

Ni%olai &r'!et(%oy) 1*2+s

?n influential school of phonology in the interwar period was the Prague school. Ine of its leading members was Prince (i olai Trubetz oy, whose Grundzge der Phonologie (Principles of Phonology),#:% published posthumously in $9:9, is among the most important wor s in the field from this period. 8irectly influenced by Caudouin de @ourtenay, Trubetz oy is considered the founder of morphophonology, although this concept had also been recognized by de @ourtenay. Trubetz oy also developed the concept of the archiphoneme. ?nother important figure in the Prague school was Joman Da obson, who was one of the most prominent linguists of the &)th century. In $9G> (oam @homs y and <orris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English (*PK), the basis for generative phonology. In this view, phonological representations are sequences of segments made up of distinctive features. These features were an e!pansion of earlier wor by Joman Da obson, ,unnar 'ant, and <orris Halle. The features describe aspects of articulation and perception, are from a universally fi!ed set, and have the binary values L or M. There are at least two levels of representationN underlying representation and surface phonetic representation. Irdered phonological rules govern how underlying representation is transformed into the actual

pronunciation (the soOcalled surface form). ?n important consequence of the influence *PK had on phonological theory was the downplaying of the syllable and the emphasis on segments. 'urthermore, the generativists folded morphophonology into phonology, which both solved and created problems. (atural phonology is a theory based on the publications of its proponent 8avid *tampe in $9G9 and (more e!plicitly) in $9A9. In this view, phonology is based on a set of universal phonological processes which interact with one anotherP which ones are active and which are suppressed is languageOspecific. Jather than acting on segments, phonological processes act on distinctive features within prosodic groups. Prosodic groups can be as small as a part of a syllable or as large as an entire utterance. Phonological processes are unordered with respect to each other and apply simultaneously (though the output of one process may be the input to another). The second most prominent natural phonologist is Patricia 8onegan (*tampe;s wife)P there are many (atural Phonologists in Kurope, though also a few others in the Q.*., such as ,eoffrey (athan. The principles of natural phonology were e!tended to morphology by "olfgang Q. 8ressler, who founded natural morphology. In $9AG Dohn ,oldsmith introduced autosegmental phonology. Phonological phenomena are no longer seen as operating on one linear sequence of segments, called phonemes or feature combinations, but rather as involving some parallel se uences of features which reside on multiple tiers. ?utosegmental phonology later evolved into feature geometry, which became the standard theory of representation for the theories of the organization of phonology as different as le!ical phonology and optimality theory. ,overnment phonology, which originated in the early $9>)s as an attempt to unify theoretical notions of syntactic and phonological structures, is based on the notion that all languages necessarily follow a small set of principles and vary according to their selection of certain binary parameters. That is, all languages; phonological structures are essentially the same, but there is restricted variation that accounts for differences in surface realizations. Principles are held to be inviolable, though parameters may sometimes come into conflict. Prominent figures include Donathan Faye, Dean =owenstamm, DeanOJoger Rergnaud, <oni @harette, Dohn Harris, and many others. In a course at the =*? summer institute in $99$, ?lan Prince and Paul *molens y developed optimality theorySan overall architecture for phonology according to which languages choose a pronunciation of a word that best satisfies a list of constraints ordered by importanceN a lowerO ran ed constraint can be violated when the violation is necessary in order to obey a higherO ran ed constraint. The approach was soon e!tended to morphology by Dohn <c@arthy and ?lan Prince, and has become a dominant trend in phonology. Though this usually goes unac nowledged, optimality theory was strongly influenced by natural phonologyP both view phonology in terms of constraints on spea ers and their production, though these constraints are formalized in very different ways.#citation needed% The appeal to phonetic grounding of constraints in various approaches has been criticized by proponents of ;substanceOfree phonology;, especially <ar Hale and @harles Jeiss.#T%#G% Croadly spea ing, government phonology (or its descendant, strictO@R phonology) has a greater following in the Qnited Fingdom, whereas optimality theory is predominant in the Qnited *tates.
#citation needed%

Analysis of phonemes
?n important part of traditional, preOgenerative, schools of phonology is studying which sounds can be grouped into distinctive units within a languageP these units are nown as phonemes. 'or e!ample, in Knglish, the 1p1 sound in pot is aspirated (pronounced #p%), while that in spot is not aspirated (pronounced #p%). However, Knglish spea ers intuitively treat both sounds as variations (allophones) of the same phonological category, that is, of the phoneme UpU. (Traditionally, it would be argued that if an aspirated #p% were interchanged with the unaspirated #p% in spot, native spea ers of Knglish would still hear the same wordsP that is, the two sounds are perceived as 1the same1 UpU.) In some other languages, however, these two sounds are perceived as different, and they are consequently assigned to different phonemes. 'or e!ample, in Thai, Hindi, and Vuechua, there are minimal pairs of words for which aspiration is the only contrasting feature (two words with different meanings that are identical e!cept that one has an aspirated sound where the other has an unaspirated one).

&he vo,els of modern -Standard. Ara!ic and -/sraeli. 0e!re, from the phonemic point of vie,1 Note the intersection of the t,o circles2the distinction !et,een short a) i and u is made !y !oth spea%ers) !'t Ara!ic lac%s the mid artic'lation of short vo,els) ,hile 0e!re, lac%s the distinction of vo,el length1

&he vo,els of modern -Standard. Ara!ic and -/sraeli. 0e!re, from the phonetic point of vie,1 Note that the t,o circles are totally separate2none of the vo,el3so'nds made !y spea%ers of one lang'age is made !y spea%ers of the other1

Part of the phonological study of a language therefore involves loo ing at data (phonetic transcriptions of the speech of native spea ers) and trying to deduce what the underlying phonemes are and what the sound inventory of the language is. The presence or absence of minimal pairs, as mentioned above, is a frequently used criterion for deciding whether two sounds should be assigned to the same phoneme. However other considerations often need to be ta en into account as well. The particular contrasts which are phonemic in a language can change over time. ?t one time, #f% and #v%, two sounds that have the same place and manner of articulation and differ in voicing only, were allophones of the same phoneme in Knglish, but later came to belong to separate phonemes. This is one of the main factors of historical change of languages as described in historical linguistics. The findings and insights of speech perception and articulation research complicate the traditional and somewhat intuitive idea of interchangeable allophones being perceived as the same phoneme. 'irst, interchanged allophones of the same phoneme can result in unrecognizable words. *econd, actual speech, even at a word level, is highly coOarticulated, so it is problematic to e!pect to be able to splice words into simple segments without affecting speech perception. 8ifferent linguists therefore ta e different approaches to the problem of assigning sounds to phonemes. 'or e!ample, they differ in the e!tent to which they require allophones to be phonetically similar. There are also differing ideas as to whether this grouping of sounds is purely a tool for linguistic analysis, or reflects an actual process in the way the human brain processes a language. *ince the early $9G)s, theoretical linguists have moved away from the traditional concept of a phoneme, preferring to consider basic units at a more abstract level, as a component of morphemesP these units can be called morphophonemes, and analysis using this approach is called morphophonology.

Other topics in phonology

In addition to the minimal units that can serve the purpose of differentiating meaning (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, i.e. replace one another in different forms of the same morpheme (allomorphs), as well as, for e!ample, syllable structure, stress, feature geometry, accent, and intonation. Phonology also includes topics such as phonotactics (the phonological constraints on what sounds can appear in what positions in a given language) and phonological alternation (how the pronunciation of a sound changes through the application of phonological rules, sometimes in a given order which can be feeding or bleeding,#A%) as well as prosody, the study of suprasegmentals and topics such as stress and intonation. The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of modality because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools, not languageOspecific ones. The same principles have been applied to the analysis of sign languages (see Phonemes in sign languages), even though the subOle!ical units are not instantiated as speech sounds.

See also
+ A!sol'te ne'tralisation

+ 4herology + #nglish phonology + 5ist of phonologists -also 4ategory6 7honologists. + 8orphophonology + 7honeme + 7honological development + 7honological hierarchy + 7rosody -ling'istics. + 7honotactics + Second lang'age phonology + 7honological r'le

Notes
$. 5ass) 9oger -1**"1 Digiti(ed 2+++.1 Phonology: An Introduction to Basic Concepts1
4am!ridge) :;< Ne, =or%< 8el!o'rne) A'stralia6 4am!ridge :niversity 7ress1 p1 11 /S N )O52132372"3*1 9etrieved " >an'ary 2+11 7aper!ac% /S N +352132"1"33+

&. 4arr) 7hilip -2++3.1 English Phonetics and Phonology: An Introduction1 8assach'setts)
:SA< O$ford) :;< ?ictoria) A'stralia< erlin) @ermany6 lac%,ell 7'!lishing1 /S N +36313 1*775331 9etrieved " >an'ary 2+11 7aper!ac% /S N +363131*77631

:. &r'!et(%oy N1) Grundzge der Phonologie -p'!lished 1*3*.) translated !y 41 alta$e as

Principles of Phonology) :niversity of 4alifornia 7ress) 1*6*

B. 4lar%) >ohn< =allop) 4olin< Aletcher) >anet -2++7.1 An Introduction to Phonetics and
Phonology -3rd ed1.1 8assach'setts) :SA< O$ford) :;< ?ictoria) A'stralia6 lac%,ell 7'!lishing1 /S N *7"3134+5133+"3371 9etrieved " >an'ary 2+11 Alternative /S N 13 4+5133+"33+

T. 0ale) 8ar%< 9eiss) 4harles -2++".1 The Phonological Enterprise1 O$ford) :;6 O$ford
:niversity 7ress1 /S N +31*3*533*73+.

G. 0ale) 8ar%< 9eiss) 4harles -2+++.1 Substance abuse and dysfunctionalis : Current
trends in phonology! 5ing'istic /nB'iry "#: #$%&#'( )*+++,.

A. @oldsmith 1**5611

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External links
+ 7honetics and phonology on the Open Directory 7roHect