Phonology

Phonology (from Ancient Greek: φωνή, phōnḗ, "voice, sound" and λόγος, lógos, "word, speech, subject of discussion") is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. In more narrow terms, "phonology proper is concerned with the function, behaviour and organization of sounds as linguistic items". Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system. When describing the formal area of study, the term typically describes linguistic analysis either beneath the word (e.g., syllable, onset and rhyme, phoneme,...