Phonology

Phonology is the study of the way sounds function in languages,

including phonemes, syllable structure, stress, accent, intonation, and which
sounds are distinctive units within a language.

Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across

languages. Put more formally, phonology is the study of the categorical
organization of speech sounds in languages; how speech sounds are organized in
the mind and used to convey meaning.

Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically

organize their phones or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The
term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language
variety.

What are the differences between phonetics and phonology?

No Phonetics Phonology
1 It is concerned with the studying of It is concerned with the studying of
how the speech sounds are produced. the system and patterns of speech
sound in a language.
2 Phonetics is concerned with the Phonology is concerned with the
physical properties of sounds. abstract, and mental aspect of
sound.
3 It’s concerned with phones [ ] It’s concerned with phonemes / /
4 Untaught and unconscious:
Speakers apply these rules without
being aware of it, and they acquire
the rules early in life without any
 explicit teaching
What are phone, phoneme, and allophone?

Phone: It is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact
sound is critical to the meanings of words.

In linguistics, a phone (from the Greek fōnḗ) is a distinct speech sound. We study
phones in Phonetics, the branch of linguistics that deals with the physical production
and reception of sound. Phones are not specific to particular languages and aren’t
always vital for understanding the meaning of a word. Phones are represented by
letters and symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Look at the words spin and pat. They both contain the letter p; however, the speech
sounds differ slightly. By looking at the phonetic transcription of the words, we
can compare the two different phones.
[spɪn] and [pʰæt]

As you can see, the word spin contains 4 phones (s, p, ɪ, and n) and the
word pat has 3 (pʰ, æ, and t). Notice how the first phone in the word pat is the
symbol p accompanied by a small h - this is because the p is aspirated (pronounced
with an exhalation of breath). Whether or not we pronounce the word pat with an
exhalation of breath, the word's meaning won’t change, and most people will
understand what you’re saying. However, the phone [pʰ] shows us the actual sound
made when [p] is used in this word.

Phoneme:

Phoneme, in linguistics, smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word
element) from another, as the element p in “tap,” which separates that word from
“tab,” “tag,” and “tan.”

A phoneme is a speech sound. It’s the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes one
word from another. Since sounds cannot be written, we use letters to represent or
stand for the sounds. A grapheme is the written representation (a letter or cluster
of letters) of one sound. It is generally agreed that there are approximately 44
sounds in English, with some variation dependent on accent and articulation. The
44 English phonemes are represented by the 26 letters of the alphabet individually
and in combination.

Allophone:

Allophone, one of the phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme. The occurrence

of one allophone rather than another is usually determined by its position in the
word (initial, final, medial, etc.) or by its phonetic environment. Speakers of
a language often have difficulty in hearing the phonetic differences between
allophones of the same phoneme, because these differences do not serve to
distinguish one word from another. In English the t sounds in the words “hit,”
“tip,” and “little” are allophones; phonemically they are considered to be the
same sound although they are different phonetically in terms of aspiration, voicing,
and point of articulation.

Difference between phone, phoneme, and allophone

Minimum unit of sound is called phone. OR The speech sounds considered as units
of phonetic analysis are called phones.

Phones are any sound of language that can be consistently and individually
produced and recognised by the speaker of language. Phones are represented by
enclosing the appropriate alphabet/symbol in square bracket. Thus, [p] will refer to
p sound (which is described more technically as a voiceless, bilabial sound)

PHONEME Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is

described as a phoneme. Slash marks are conventionally used to indicate a
phoneme, e.g. /t/, an abstract segment, as opposed to the square brackets, as in [t],
used for each phonetic or physically produced segment.
ALLOPHONE When we have a set of phones, all of which are versions of one
phoneme, we add the prefix “allo-” (= one of a closely related set) and refer to
them as allophones of that phoneme.
Aspirate, the sound h as in English “hat.” Consonant sounds such as the English
voiceless stops p, t, and k at the beginning of words (e.g., “pat,” “top,” “keel”) are
also aspirated because they are pronounced with an accompanying forceful
expulsion of air. Such sounds are not aspirated at the end of words or in
combination with certain consonants (e.g., in “spot,” “stop”).

Minimal pairs and sets

Minimal pairs: a pair of words, as pin and bin, or bet and bed, differing only by

one sound (phoneme) in the same position in each word, especially when such a

pair is taken as evidence for the existence of a phonemic contrast between the two

sounds.

Big pig far fat ball tall

Minimal sets: A group of words differing only by one phoneme (consonant or

vowel). For example

- Consonant: big pig wig dig fig

- Vowel: beat bet bit but boat

 Syllable
Syllable is a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without
surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word; for example, there
are two syllables in water and three in inferno.
Syllable is a single unit of speech, either a whole word or one of the parts into
which a word can be separated, usually containing a vowel.
Onset definition: An onset is the part of the syllable that precedes the vowel of the
syllable.
The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term
"rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final
consonants (e.g. at in cat). Not all words have onsets.
The nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. The onset is the sound
or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the coda is the sound or sounds that
follow the nucleus. They are sometimes collectively known as the shell. The term
rime covers the nucleus plus coda.
The process of breaking up word into syllables is called syllabification.

1. Minimum syllable: which contain only a single vowel with zero onset and zero
coda.
2. One syllable words known as monosyllabic: Cat, dog, car, sky.
3. Two syllables words known as disyllabic: Ho-tel, Po-em, Chor-us.
4. Three syllables words known as trisyllabic: Beau-ti-ful, met-a-phor, po-e-try.
5. More than three syllables words known as polysyllabic: Ox-y-mor-on.
Examples of Syllables

1 syllable words ….. dog, man, think, fall, door, north, bath

2 syllable words …. water, money, daughter, swimming, weather

3 syllable words …. hospital, signature, travelling, maximum

4 syllable words …. dedicated, manifested, information,

5 syllable word s …. predisposition, understandable, psychological

6 syllable words …. responsibility, predictability, inconsequential

 Basic Syllable Rules
1. Syllables can be made up of just one letter or several letters.

Example: the word a as in “a” book contains only one letter (which is a vowel) and is made up
of just one syllable

The word again is made up of two syllables

a ( 1 syllable) + gain ( 1 syllable) = 2 syllables

2. Most words have between 1 and 6 syllables in them. Few words have more than six
syllables.

Examples:

- 1 syllable words ….. dog, man, think, fall, door, north, bath
- 2 syllable words …. water, money, daughter, swimming, weather
- 3 syllable words …. hospital, signature, travelling, maximum
- 4syllable words …. dedicated, manifested, information,
- 5syllable word s …. predisposition, understandable, psychological
- 6 syllable words …. responsibility, predictability, inconsequential
3. Note: This is one of the easiest and most important syllable rules to
learn.

Every syllable has at least one vowel... meaning there will be one or more of these
letters …. a e i o u y in each syllable. (Note the letter y is not strictly a vowel but
behaves like one, so it is included here.)

Here are some examples of words broken into syllables. The vowels are marked in
bold.

Man (1 vowel/1 syllable)

progress (2 vowels) pro / gress (2 syllables)

bicycle (3 vowels) bi / cy / cle (3 syllables)

4. When a word has just one vowel, it is not divided. It is a one syllable word.
Examples: egg, plant, flag, ball, sand, sky, stand, truck, sock

5. There are some circumstances when a vowel should not be counted when you are
calculating the number of syllables in a word.
A good way to check this is to place your hand under your chin. You will
feel your jaw drop whenever you pronounce a vowel sound. Each time this
happens count one syllable.

Examples:

Silent e is not counted as a vowel in a syllable.

* the word came has a silent e at the end of it. Your jaw will not drop. The
syllable rule is to ignore the e when counting the vowels in words like this. You,
therefore, only need to count the a. In this case this makes the word came a one
syllable word.

Other words like this include… save, bone, tube, late, fume

Count only one vowel in words where only one vowel sound can be heard.

Examples:

In the word boat, count the o (that’s the sound you can hear) as one vowel and
therefore one syllable. Ignore the silent a in the word.

Other words which have two vowels but make only one sound include…meat, suit,
road, stream, through, night, clown, glue, roar, saw, door, earth

6. When a consonant is in the middle of a word, split the word in front of the
consonant. The first vowel often says its name.

Examples: o/pen, ba/by, a/ble, pro/ject, pa/per, spi/der

7. A compound word is made up of two words which have been joined together. To
break a compound word into syllables, just divide it again into two separate words.

Examples:

basketball becomes basket / ball

sunflower becomes sun / flower

 swordfish becomes sword / fish

meatball becomes meat / ball

8. When there are double consonants in a word, the syllable rule here is to split it
between the consonants.

Examples:

yellow becomes yel / ow

balloon becomes bal / oon

buffalo becomes buf / fa / lo

written becomes writ / ten

9. When a word has a prefix or a suffix, each is counted as one syllable. Prefixes are
small groups of letters that are attached to some words to alter their meaning.
Suffixes are groups of letters that are added to the end of a word.

Examples:

(The prefix at the beginning of each word below is highlighted in bold.)

concealed becomes con / cealed

repeat becomes re / peat

prepare becomes pre / pare

unseen becomes un /seen

(The suffixes at the ends of the words below are highlighted in bold.)

awaken becomes a / wak / en

stranger becomes strang / er

skated becomes skat /ed

walking becomes walk / ing

happiness becomes happ/ i /ness

 playful becomes play / ful

10. When a word ends in le and it sounds like “el” , count back three letters and split it
there. It will include the le and the consonant before that.

Eg ta / ble, crum / ble, cas / tle, wob / ble, wres / tle

Stressed and unstressed syllables

Stressed unstressed
Longer Shorter
Louder Quieter
Higher lower

For examples:
Banana ( ba,na,na )
Teacher (tea, cher )
University ( un,i,ver,si,ty)
Texas ( tex, as )
Oklahoma (ok, la, ho,ma)
Cat ( no stressed on monosyllable words, stressed only on those words which contain more than
one syllable)

Consonant clusters

A consonant cluster in a word is a group of consonants with no vowels between

them. The longest possible cluster in English is three consonant sounds at the start,
such as 'splash', and four at the end, as in 'twelfths'.
 Co-articulation
Co-articulation effects: it’s the process of making one sound almost at the same
time as the next sound.
Assimilation
Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes
(typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby
sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation
can occur either within a word or between words.

It occurs in normal speech but becomes more common in more rapid speech. In
some cases, assimilation causes the sound spoken to differ from the
normal pronunciation in isolation, such as the prefix in- of
English input pronounced with phonetic [m] rather than [n]. In this case, [n]
becomes [m] since [m] is more phonetically similar to [p]. In other cases, the
change is accepted as canonical for that word or phrase, especially if it is
recognized in standard spelling: implosion pronounced with [m], composed
of in- + -plosion (as in explosion).

English "handbag" (canonically /ˈhændbæɡ/) is often pronounced /ˈhæmbæɡ/ in

rapid speech because the [m] and [b] sounds are both bilabial consonants, and
their places of articulation are similar.

Elision
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as
a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these
terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run
together by the omission of a final sound.[1] An example is the elision of word-
final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is
often pronounced “firs’ light” (/fɜ:s laɪt/.)[2] Many other terms are used to refer to
specific cases where sounds are omitted.

In phonetics and phonology, elision is the omission of a sound (a phoneme)

in speech. Elision is common in casual conversation.

More specifically, elision may refer to the omission of an

unstressed vowel, consonant, or syllable. This omission is often indicated in print
by an apostrophe.

How elision is used?

"Elision of sounds can ... be seen clearly in contracted forms like isn't (is
not), I'll (I shall/will), who's (who is/has), they'd (they had, they should, or they
would), haven't (have not) and so on. We see from these examples that vowels
or/and consonants can be elided. In the case of contractions or words
like library (pronounced in rapid speech as /laibri/), the whole syllable is elided."