Phonology (from Ancient Greek:

, ph n , "voice, sound" and

, lgos, "word, speech, subject of discussion") is, broadly

[1]

speaking, the subdiscipline oflinguistics 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, articulatory gestures, articulatory feature, mora, etc.) or to units at all levels of language that are thought to structure sound for conveying linguistic meaning. It is viewed as the subfield of linguistics that deals with the sound systems of languages. Whereas phonetics is about the physical production, acoustic transmission and perception of the sounds of speech,
[1][3] [1] [2]

phonology describes the way sounds function within a

given language or across languages to encode meaning. The term "phonology" was used in the linguistics of a greater part of the 20th century as a cover term uniting phonemics and phonetics. Current phonology can interface with disciplines such as psycholinguistics and speech perception, resulting in specific areas like articulatory or laboratory phonology. (en.wikipedia.org/phonology)

phonology,

study of the sound patterns that occur within languages. Some linguists include phonetics, the study of the production and

description of speech sounds, within the study of phonology. (www.brittanica.com)