Editing Phonology (section)

== Analysis of phonemes ==
{{IPA notice|section}}{{Unreferenced section|date=May 2019}}
An important part of traditional, pre-generative schools of phonology is studying which sounds can be grouped into distinctive units within a language; these units are known as [[phoneme]]s. For example, in English, the "p" sound in ''pot'' is [[Aspiration (phonetics)|aspirated]] (pronounced {{IPA|[pʰ]}}) while that in ''spot'' is not aspirated (pronounced {{IPA|[p]}}). However, English speakers intuitively treat both sounds as variations ([[allophone]]s, which cannot give origin to [[minimal pairs]]) of the same phonological category, that is of the phoneme {{IPA|/p/}}. (Traditionally, it would be argued that if an aspirated {{IPA|[pʰ]}} were interchanged with the unaspirated {{IPA|[p]}} in ''spot'', native speakers of English would still hear the same words; that is, the two sounds are perceived as "the same" {{IPA|/p/}}.) In some other languages, however, these two sounds are perceived as different, and they are consequently assigned to different phonemes. For example, in [[Thai language|Thai]], [[Bengali language|Bengali]], and [[Quechua languages|Quechua]], there are [[minimal pair]]s of words for which aspiration is the only contrasting feature (two words can have different meanings but with the only difference in pronunciation being that one has an aspirated sound where the other has an unaspirated one).

[[File:Phonological Diagram of modern Arabic and Hebrew vowels.png|thumb|upright=1.15|The vowels of modern (Standard) [[Arabic]] (left) and (Israeli) [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] (right) from the phonemic point of view. Note the intersection of the two circles—the distinction between short ''a'', ''i'' and ''u'' is made by both speakers, but Arabic lacks the mid articulation of short vowels, while Hebrew lacks the distinction of vowel length.]]

[[File:Phonetic Diagram of modern Arabic and Hebrew vowels.png|thumb|upright=1.15|The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonetic point of view. The two circles are totally separate—none of the vowel-sounds made by speakers of one language is made by speakers of the other.]]

Part of the phonological study of a language therefore involves looking at data (phonetic [[transcription (linguistics)|transcriptions]] of the speech of [[native speaker]]s) and trying to deduce what the underlying phonemes are and what the sound inventory of the language is. The presence or absence of minimal pairs, as mentioned above, is a frequently used criterion for deciding whether two sounds should be assigned to the same phoneme. However, other considerations often need to be taken into account as well.

The particular contrasts which are phonemic in a language can change over time. At one time, {{IPA|[f]}} and {{IPA|[v]}}, two sounds that have the same place and manner of articulation and differ in voicing only, were [[allophones]] of the same phoneme in English, but later came to belong to separate phonemes. This is one of the main factors of historical change of languages as described in [[historical linguistics]].

The findings and insights of speech perception and articulation research complicate the traditional and somewhat intuitive idea of interchangeable allophones being perceived as the same phoneme. First, interchanged allophones of the same phoneme can result in unrecognizable words. Second, actual speech, even at a word level, is highly co-articulated, so it is problematic to expect to be able to splice words into simple segments without affecting speech perception.

Different linguists therefore take different approaches to the problem of assigning sounds to phonemes. For example, they differ in the extent to which they require allophones to be phonetically similar. There are also differing ideas as to whether this grouping of sounds is purely a tool for linguistic analysis, or reflects an actual process in the way the human brain processes a language.

Since the early 1960s, theoretical linguists have moved away from the traditional concept of a phoneme, preferring to consider basic units at a more abstract level, as a component of [[morpheme]]s; these units can be called ''morphophonemes'', and analysis using this approach is called [[morphophonology]].<!-- This is not correct, morphophonemes were present already in the Prague School and are by no means an invention of generative phonology. "Underlying segments" should be referred to instead. If the author does not chage it, I will edit it later. -->