What is phonology?



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

Comparison: Phonology and phonetics
Phonetics … Phonology …
Is the basis for phonological analysis. Is the basis for further work in morphology, syntax, discourse, and orthography design.
Analyzes the production of all human speech sounds, regardless of language. Analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language by
• determining which phonetic sounds are significant, and
• explaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native speaker.



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Phonetics vs. Phonology
1. Phonetics vs. phonology
Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken. Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words etc.
2. Phonology as grammar of phonetic patterns
• The consonant cluster /st/ is OK at the beginning, middle or end of words in English.
• At beginnings of words, /str/ is OK in English, but /ftr/ or / tr/ are not (they are ungrammatical).
• / tr/ is OK in the middle of words, however, e.g. in "ashtray".
• / tr/ is OK at the beginnings of words in German, though, and /ftr/ is OK word-initially in Russian, but not in English or German.
3. A given sound have a different function or status in the sound patterns of different languages
For example, the glottal stop [ ] occurs in both English and Arabic BUT ...
In English, at the beginning of a word, [ ] is a just way of beginning vowels, and does not occur with consonants. In the middle or at the end of a word, [ ] is one possible pronunciation of /t/ in e.g. "pat" [pa ].
In Arabic, / / is a consonant sound like any other (/k/, /t/ or whatever): [ íktib] "write!", [da íi a] "minute (time)", [ a ] "right".
4. Phonemes and allophones, or sounds and their variants
The vowels in the English words "cool", "whose" and "moon" are all similar but slightly different. They are three variants or allophones of the /u/ phoneme. The different variants are dependent on the different contexts in which they occur. Likewise, the consonant phoneme /k/ has different variant pronunciations in different contexts. Compare:

keep /kip/ The place of articulation is fronter in the mouth [k+h]
cart /k t/ The place of articulation is not so front in the mouth [kh]
coot /kut/ The place of articulation is backer, and the lips are rounded [khw]
seek /sik/ There is less aspiration than in initial position [k`]
scoop /skup/ There is no aspiration after /s/ [k]
These are all examples of variants according to position (contextual variants). There are also variants between speakers and dialects. For example, "toad" may be pronounced [tëUd] in high-register RP, [toUd] or [to d] in the North. All of them are different pronunciations of the same sequence of phonemes. But these differences can lead to confusion: [toUd] is "toad" in one dialect, but may be "told" in another.
5. Phonological systems
Phonology is not just (or even mainly) concerned with categories or objects (such as consonants, vowels, phonemes, allophones, etc.) but is also crucially about relations. For example, the English stops and fricatives can be grouped into related pairs which differ in voicing and (for the stops) aspiration:

Voiceless/aspirated ph th kh f s h
Voiced/unaspirated b d v z ð (unpaired)
Patterns lead to expectations: we expect the voiceless fricative [h] to be paired with a voiced [ ], but we do not find this sound as a distinctive phoneme in English. And in fact /h/ functions differently from the other voiceless fricatives (it has a different distribution in words etc.) So even though [h] is phonetically classed as a voiceless fricative, it is phonologically quite different from /f/, /s/, / / and / /.
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