Phonology
Phonology is that branch of linguistics which studies
the sound system of 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.)
(It
might also be relevant to say here that we will distinguish phonetics
from phonology.)
A phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound in the human
language.
Yet it is not identical with the sound itself, it is rather a theoretical
representation without mentioning its position in a syllable, word, or phrase
(for instance, there are eleven sounds in 'contract hire' but only nine
phonemes).
One important feature of phonemes is their
contrastiveness which enables their identification. It is by contrasting the
two phonemes, for example /k/ and /g/ that can be seen that they differ in at
least one feature, like voicing. All languages have a set of such distinctive
phonemes. By and large, it seems that the majority of languages have about 30
phonemes, but there are some that have as few as 11 or as many as almost 150.
The English language, it is said, has about 43 phonemes, depending on the
variety of English in question. Even though the number of phonemes may differ
from language to language, the sets are always limited, but enable speakers to
create unlimited numbers of words.
In English the word step consists of four
phonemes, and the word pest has the same four phonemes, yet since they are in
different order the meaning is not the same. Phonology also investigates the
possible sequences of phonemes in a given language. it does not mean that such
words do not appear in that language. Sometimes loan words may break the
phonological rules of a given language and still be in use, as is the case with
the initial position of the / /?n-/ sound in English. By and large, words with
such a sound in the initial position have started appearing in English only
recently and all of them are loan words: schnapps, schnitzel, schmo.
The analysis
of the possible sequences of phonemes is focuses not only on phonemes
themselves, but also on syllables and clusters. A syllable must comprise a
vowel, but usually there is also a consonant (C) before the vowel (V). Syllables
are frequently described as consisting of an onset, which is a
consonant, or a few consonants, and a rhyme, often subdivided into a nucleus
(a vowel), and coda
(any following consonants). In the English language coda does not always have
to occur in a syllable, like for instance in the words: he (CV), or too (CV).
Clusters, or consonant clusters are simply two or more consonants one after
another. Clusters, like other phonotactic rules, are characteristic of a given
language, for instance the /st/ cluster in English can be an onset: street, or
a coda: highest, however it is impossible in Japanese.
Apart from analyzing the phonemes of a
language, clusters and syllables, phonology also deals with the processes that
occur in everyday, fluent speech. The most frequent processes that can be
observed in casual speech are assimilation and elision. Assimilation is a
process in which certain sounds copy the characteristics of another, adjacent
sound.
Elision is a
process in which some sounds, or even syllables are omitted and not pronounced
at all, although in other situations they are normally uttered. Elision occurs
not because of laziness of speakers, but to make the pronunciation more fluent.
Reference
