Essay: Phonology and its content

What is Phonology?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Phonology is one of branches of linguistics which concerns about the sound system in particular language. It derives from the Greek 'phone' and 'logos'. 'Phone' means sounds or voices, while 'logos' means words or speech. It is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function - within a given language or across languages. 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. On the other hand, /p/ is often pronounced differently depending on its placement relative to other sounds or its position within a word, yet these different pronunciations are still considered to be the same phoneme.

In addition to the minimal meaningful sounds—the phonemes—phonology is concerned with how sounds alternate, as well as issues like syllable structure, stress, accent, and intonation. One example of what a phonologist might study is how the /t/ sounds in the words tub, stub, but, and butter are all pronounced differently, yet are all perceived as "the same sound."

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

The writing systems of some languages are based on the phonemic principle of having one letter (or combination of letters) per phoneme and vice-versa. Ideally, speakers can correctly write whatever they can say, and can correctly read anything that is written. (In practice, this ideal is never realized.) However in English, different phonemes can be spelled the same way (e.g., good and food have different vowel sounds), and the same letter (or combination of letters) can represent different sounds (e.g., the "th" consonant sounds of thin and this are different). In order to avoid this confusion based on orthography, phonologists represent phonemes by writing them between two slashes: " / / " (but without the quotes). On the other hand, the actual sounds are enclosed by square brackets: " [ ] " (again, without quotes). While the letters between slashes may be based on spelling conventions, the letters between square brackets are usually the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or some other phonetic transcription system

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 are not 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/.

Syllable structure
The general structure of a syllable consists of the following segments:

Onset (obligatory in some languages, optional in others)
Rime
Nucleus (obligatory in all languages)
Coda (optional in some languages, highly restricted or prohibited in others)

In some theories of phonology, these syllable structures are displayed as tree diagrams (similar to the trees found in some types of syntax).

The syllable nucleus is typically a sonorant, usually a vowel sound, in the form of a monophthong, diphthong, or triphthong, but sometimes including consonants like [l] and [r]. The syllable onset is the sound(s) occurring before the nucleus, and the syllable coda is the sound(s) occurring after the nucleus. A rime consists of a nucleus and a coda.

Generally, every syllable requires a nucleus. A coda-less syllable of the form V, CV, CCV, etc. (i.e. a sequence of any number of consonants + a syllabic sonorant, usually a vowel) is called an open syllable, while a syllable that has a coda (VC, CVC, CVCC, etc.) is called a closed syllable (or checked syllable). All languages allow syllables with empty codas (open syllables).

A heavy syllable is one with a branching rime or a branching nucleus. In some languages, heavy syllables include both CVV (branching nucleus) and CVC (branching rime) syllables. In other languages, only CVV syllables (ones with a long vowel or diphthong) are heavy, while CVC and CV syllables are light syllables. In moraic theory, heavy syllables are said to have two moras, while light syllables are said to have one.

In some languages, including English, a consonant may be analyzed as acting simultaneously as the coda of one syllable and the onset of the next, a phenomenon known as ambisyllabicity.

Stress

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word.

The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream is highly language dependent. In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed syllables — so-called pitch accent (or musical accent). There are also dynamic accent (loudness), quantitative accent (full vowels), and qualitative accent (length, known in music theory as agogic accent). Stress may be characterized by more than one of these characteristics. For instance, stressed syllables in English have higher pitch, longer duration, and typically fuller vowels than unstressed syllables, as well as being dynamically louder. Stressed syllables in Russian are broadly similar, but have lower rather than higher pitch. Contrasting with these, stressed and unstressed vowels in Spanish share the same quality, and the language has no reduced vowels like English or Russian.

The possibilities for stress in tone languages is an area of ongoing research.

Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress is accompanied by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract.

Intonation (linguistics)

Intonation, in linguistics, is the variation of pitch when speaking. Intonation and stress are two main elements of linguistic prosody.

Many languages use pitch syntactically, for instance to convey surprise and irony or to change a statement to a question. Such languages are called intonation languages. English is a well-known example. Some languages use pitch to distinguish words; these are known as tonal languages. Thai is an example. An intermediate position is occupied by languages with tonal word accent, for instance Norwegian.

Rising intonation means the pitch of the voice increases over time; falling intonation means that the pitch decreases with time. A dipping intonation falls and then rises, whereas a peaking intonation rises and then falls.

The classic example of intonation is the question/statement distinction. For example, northeastern American English has a rising intonation for echo or declarative questions (He found it on the street?), and a falling intonation for wh- questions and statements. Yes/no questions often have a rising end, but not always. The Chickasaw has the opposite pattern, rising for statements and falling with questions.

Dialects of British and Irish English vary substantially (Grabe 2004,[1]), with rises on many statements in urban Belfast, and falls on most questions in urban Leeds.

Transcription

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, "global" (that is, clause-level) rising and falling intonation are marked with the arrows [↗] and [↘]:

He found it on the street?
[hi faʊnd ɪt ɑn ðə stɹit↗ ‖ ]
Yes, he found it on the street.
[jɛs↘ ‖ hi faʊnd ɪt ɑn ðə stɹit↘ ‖ ]