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    Phonology is the study of sound patterns in language. It examines phonemes, which are meaningful sound units, and allophones, which are contextual variants of phonemes. Phonological rules formally describe systematic sound changes in a language. While phonological rules may seem language-specific, they are actually constrained by phonological universals. Ockham's razor requires phonological rules to fully capture data rather than be brief, as brevity is not a priority according to Chomsky's phonology.

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    Phonology is the study of sound patterns in language. It examines phonemes, which are meaningful sound units, and allophones, which are contextual variants of phonemes. Phonological rules formally describe systematic sound changes in a language. While phonological rules may seem language-specific, they are actually constrained by phonological universals. Ockham's razor requires phonological rules to fully capture data rather than be brief, as brevity is not a priority according to Chomsky's phonology.

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    Notes from OCW and Odden

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    Phonology is the study of sound patterns in language. It examines phonemes, which are meaningful sound units, and allophones, which are contextual variants of phonemes. Phonological rules formally describe systematic sound changes in a language. While phonological rules may seem language-specific, they are actually constrained by phonological universals. Ockham's razor requires phonological rules to fully capture data rather than be brief, as brevity is not a priority according to Chomsky's phonology.

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    Phonology is the study of sound patterns in language. It examines phonemes, which are meaningful sound units, and allophones, which are contextual variants of phonemes. Phonological rules formally describe systematic sound changes in a language. While phonological rules may seem language-specific, they are actually constrained by phonological universals. Ockham's razor requires phonological rules to fully capture data rather than be brief, as brevity is not a priority according to Chomsky's phonology.

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    Notes from ODDEN

    Introducing Phonology

    Allama School of Social and Humanities Oriented Learning in Engineering –

    Karachi and Beijing

    Terry Laelee (Faculty of Engineering, American Center, Karachi)


    T.A. Chu (School of Modern languages, Beijing Institute)
    D.U. San Gan (Center for Mass Media Studies, Osaka)
    WHAT IS PHONOLOGY
    • What is Phonology?
    • Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and
    across languages. Put more formally, phonology is the study of the
    categorical organisation of speech sounds in languages; how speech
    sounds are organised in the mind and used to convey meaning. In this
    section of the website, we will describe the most common
    phonological processes and introduce the concepts of underlying
    representations for sounds versus what is actually produced, the
    surface form.
    PHONEME VS. ALLOPHONES
    • Phonemes V. Allophones
    • Phonemes are the meaningfully different sound units in a language (the
    smallest units of sound). For example, ‘pat’ and ‘bat’ differ in their first
    phoneme: the “p” and “b”. Vowels are also phonemes, so “pat” and “pet”
    differ by a phoneme, too (But phonemes don’t always match up with
    spelling!). When two words differ by a single phoneme they are known as a
    minimal pair.
    Allophones are different ways to pronounce a phoneme based on its
    environment in a word. For example, the two allophones of /l/ in “little”
    are actually produced slightly differently, and the second one sounds
    slightly deeper. These different “l”s always occur in different environments
    in words, which is known as “complementary distribution”.
    PHONOLOGICAL RULE
    • A phonological rule is a formal way of expressing a systematic
    phonological or morphophonological process or diachronic sound
    change in language. Phonological rules are commonly used in
    generative phonology as a notation to capture sound-related
    operations and computations the human brain performs when
    producing or comprehending spoken language. They may use
    phonetic notation or distinctive features or both.
    PHONOLOGICAL RULES ARE NOT LANGUAGE
    SPECIFICS
    • Phonological universals

    Some people think that Phonological rules are language-specific,


    however this is a tricky and thorny situation. The correct answer for
    that would be that phonological rules are not language-specific.
    Ockham’s razor and Brevity of Rules
    • Phonological rules should absolutely not be brief. Brief phonological
    rules do not capture the vast amount of data, which is the
    requirement through Ockham’s razor. Since Ockham’s razor is a vastly
    more important requirement in Chomsky’s Phonology, we can
    summarily conclude that brevity of the phonological rule is something
    not desirable. Hence, it may be a factor, but brevity is certainly not an
    important parameter in making a choice of phonological rule.
    •
    • Since the Deep structure is already known to the speakers of a
    language, the phonological rules must be long and not brief.

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