Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The study of speech sounds in language or a language with reference to their distribution and patterning and to tacit rules governing pronunciation.
  • noun The sound system of a language.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The science or doctrine of the sounds uttered by the human voice, or used in a particular language; phonetics.
  • noun That part of grammar which treats of pronunciation. Compare orthoëpy.
  • noun The system of sounds and of their combinations in a language.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The science or doctrine of the elementary sounds uttered by the human voice in speech, including the various distinctions, modifications, and combinations of tones; phonetics. Also, a treatise on sounds.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun linguistics, uncountable The study of the way sounds function in languages, including phonemes, syllable structure, stress, accent, intonation, and which sounds are distinctive units within a language.
  • noun linguistics, countable The way sounds function within a given language.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the study of the sound system of a given language and the analysis and classification of its phonemes

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From phono- + -logy.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word phonology.

Examples

  • And the mora clearly is a salient concept in Japanese phonology.

    languagehat.com: LEPCHA [MORA]. 2005

  • It ignores the many aspects of grammar that are not recursive, such as phonology, morphology, case, agreement, and many properties of words.

    "One of the Grossest Oversimplifications of All Time" Chris 2005

  • Apart from the inevitable (and sometimes intractable) problems involved in reconfiguring my knowledge of phonology so as to accommodate North American accents, the question that simply will not go away is this: Can pronunciation be taught?

    August « 2010 « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • In my experience, the dialogue that borders on tiring (which really isn't the right word -- I'd say challenging) is that which focuses on spelling words differently to highlight pronunciation (phonology) instead of taking the time to depict how a dialect is syntactically different.

    Angela Flournoy: On Dialect, Dialogue and Good Books Angela Flournoy 2011

  • Krashen language analysis literacy memorization methodology monitor motivation noun phrase pattern practice phonology presentation pronunciation reading sentence

    T is for Time « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • In my experience, the dialogue that borders on tiring (which really isn't the right word -- I'd say challenging) is that which focuses on spelling words differently to highlight pronunciation (phonology) instead of taking the time to depict how a dialect is syntactically different.

    Angela Flournoy: On Dialect, Dialogue and Good Books Angela Flournoy 2011

  • In my experience, the dialogue that borders on tiring (which really isn't the right word -- I'd say challenging) is that which focuses on spelling words differently to highlight pronunciation (phonology) instead of taking the time to depict how a dialect is syntactically different.

    Angela Flournoy: On Dialect, Dialogue and Good Books Angela Flournoy 2011

  • In my experience, the dialogue that borders on tiring (which really isn't the right word -- I'd say challenging) is that which focuses on spelling words differently to highlight pronunciation (phonology) instead of taking the time to depict how a dialect is syntactically different.

    Angela Flournoy: On Dialect, Dialogue and Good Books Angela Flournoy 2011

  • In my experience, the dialogue that borders on tiring (which really isn't the right word -- I'd say challenging) is that which focuses on spelling words differently to highlight pronunciation (phonology) instead of taking the time to depict how a dialect is syntactically different.

    Angela Flournoy: On Dialect, Dialogue and Good Books Angela Flournoy 2011

  • In my experience, the dialogue that borders on tiring (which really isn't the right word -- I'd say challenging) is that which focuses on spelling words differently to highlight pronunciation (phonology) instead of taking the time to depict how a dialect is syntactically different.

    Angela Flournoy: On Dialect, Dialogue and Good Books Angela Flournoy 2011

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.