What is Phonology?
A branch of linguistics called phonology studies the abstract, cognitive properties of speech sounds in language. Phonology is concerned with the mental representations and principles that control the sounds of a given language or languages, as opposed to phonetics, which focuses on the physical characteristics and articulatory features of speech sounds. It investigates how speech sounds work inside a particular language system and how they are arranged and used to transmit meaning, in other words. Here are some key aspects of phonology: 1. Phonemes Phonemes, the smallest distinguishable units of sound in a language, are the focus of phonology. These are the sounds that, when swapped out for another sound, can alter the meaning of a word. Because they can alter the meaning of words (e.g., "pat" vs. "bat") , the sounds /p/ and /b/ are two examples of different phonemes in English. 2. Phonological Rules Phonology is the study of the conventions and patterns that ...