What Is Meant By Phonology Of A Language?

It deals with sound system of a particular language. Phonology differs from phonetics in that the latter deals with the science of speech sounds in general with no particular reference to any one language. In phonetic speech sounds are dealt with independently, with no reference to, their paradigmatic oppositions and syntagmatic combination or their pattering into meaningful units of language. Human speech organs produce a vast variety of sounds, but the speakers make use of only a very small number of these while framing the utterance in order to communicate their ideas.

These sounds when arranged in their systematic combination, produce meaningful utterance of sound as /pit/ and /b/ in / bit/. The sounds /p/ and /b/ are significantly different ere and constitute two separate "distinctive" or "contrastive" units of sound technically known as "phonemes." A phoneme is thus defines as the minimal meaningful unit of sound. A phoneme is also defines as "a class of sounds which are phonetically similar and show certain characteristic patterns of distribution in language or dialect under consideration" (Gleason 1955). Phonemes are discovered by forming pairs of words which differ in respect of only one sound segment. Such pairs of words are called "minimal pairs." When the minimal pairs are difficult or impossible to find, the "sub-minimal pairs" are discovered to serve the purpose.