phonologized

Phonologized is an adjective used in linguistics to describe a feature of a language that has been absorbed into its phonological system, typically forming a phoneme or a regular phonological pattern. A phonologized distinction is interpreted as contrastive in the sound system rather than merely a phonetic detail of pronunciation. The term can describe both synchronic descriptions, where speakers currently treat a variation as phonological, and diachronic processes, where a historically conditioned variation loses its conditioning and becomes a phonemic distinction.

Phonologization involves a change in how sound is organized in a language. Mechanisms that lead to phonologization include loss of phonetic conditioning of allophonic variants, reanalysis of a pattern as a distinctive contrast, and analogical extension that spreads a pattern to new contexts. The result is that the language uses separate phonemes or phonological rules to encode what was once a non-contrastive, purely phonetic detail. Because the term emphasizes the integration of a feature into the sound system, it is commonly used in both historical linguistics and descriptive phonology.

In practice, a language may phonologize distinctions such as aspiration, length, tone, or voicing if speakers begin to rely on these features to distinguish meaning. The exact outcome depends on the linguistic environment and community usage, and the concept is often discussed in relation to phoneme inventories and phonological rules. The term contrasts with purely phonetic descriptions that treat differences as contextual or allophonic rather than contrastive.

See also: phonology, phonetics, phonologization, phoneme, allophony.