Phonology

Question 1

What is phonology?

Answer 1

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.
-> Phonology is not about how you make sounds, but how you use them

Question 2

What are phones and allophones?

Answer 2

Phones:
-> distinct speech sound -> the sound we make when we say something (ae -> ä)

Allophones:
->

Question 3

What is complementary distribution?

Answer 3

Complementary distribution is a relatiom between the variants of a phoneme, each of which occurs in a certain set of phonological environments. These variants are called -> allophones
-> phoneme takes a slightly different form i.e. it becomes a different allophone depending on the environment.

Question 4

What is Free variation?

Answer 4

When two Sounds appear in in the same environment without creating a semantic contrast between the two words -> little -> UKn vs. US pronounciation -> meaning stays the same.