phonology

Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies the systematic organization of sounds in languages. It focuses on the ways sounds function within a given language or languages to encode meaning, as opposed to phonetics, which concerns the physical properties of speech sounds. Phonology analyzes the inventory of distinct sounds, or phonemes, and the rules that determine how these sounds can combine and change in different contexts. It also examines allophones, the context-dependent realizations of a phoneme that do not change meaning.

Key concepts include phonemes, allophones, phonotactics, and prosody. Phonotactics describes allowable sound sequences and syllable structure, while prosody covers features such as stress, pitch, and intonation that extend beyond segmental sounds. Phonological rules account for processes like assimilation, vowel harmony, phoneme contrast, and deletion or insertion in connected speech.

Historically, phonology has evolved from the identification of phonemes in the early 20th century to more formal theories. Earlier structuralist work emphasized distinguishing sounds by contrastive minimal pairs; later Generative Phonology formalized rules for underlying representations and surface forms. Since the 1990s, approaches such as Optimality Theory have modeled phonology as constraint-based interactions, while other frameworks continue to develop representations of segments and features.

Phonology interacts with other areas of linguistics, including morphology, syntax, and sociolinguistics, and is studied across languages to understand universal patterns and variation in sound systems.