This chapter is about phonology, the component of
a grammar made up of the elements and principles that determine how sounds
pattern in a language. Phonologists attempt to make explicit statements about
the sounds pattern of individual languages in order to
discover something about the linguistic knowledge that people must have in
order to use patterns. Even more broadly, the study of phonology attempts to
discover general principles that underlie the patterning of sounds in human
language.
The existence of patterns in language depends on the organization of
certain basic elements or units that combine to make up these patterns. Three
major units of analysis will be presented in this chapter. We are already acquainted
with the idea that the flow of speech can be divided into segments. In this
chapter we investigate the patterned variation of segments. We will also
investigate the properties of the syllable, the basic unit in which segments
are grouped. A syllable is a unit of linguistics structure that consists of a
syllabic element – normally – and any segments that are associated with it. To
illustrate, the word segment can be divided into two syllables: seg and ment. A
third unit of phonological is the feature.
Feature may be thought of as the smallest building blocks of
phonological structure, corresponding as they do to articulatory or acoustic
categories such as (voice) or (strident). We will learn how segments are built
up from features segment, and syllable – interact with the processes we
investigated in the previous chapter, and with certain general principle, to
produce the sound pattern of language.
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