Editing Phonology (section)

== Other topics ==
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In addition to the minimal units that can serve the purpose of differentiating meaning (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, or replace one another in different forms of the same morpheme ([[allomorph]]s), as well as, for example, [[syllable]] structure, [[stress (linguistics)|stress]], [[feature geometry]], [[Tone (linguistics)|tone]], and [[intonation (linguistics)|intonation]].

Phonology also includes topics such as [[phonotactics]] (the phonological constraints on what sounds can appear in what positions in a given language) and [[alternation (linguistics)|phonological alternation]] (how the pronunciation of a sound changes through the application of [[phonological rule]]s, sometimes in a given order that can be [[feeding order|feeding]] or [[bleeding order|bleeding]],<ref>Goldsmith 1995:1.</ref>) as well as [[prosody (linguistics)|prosody]], the study of [[suprasegmental]]s and topics such as [[stress (linguistics)|stress]] and [[Intonation (linguistics)|intonation]].

The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of [[modality (semiotics)|modality]] because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools, not language-specific ones. The same principles have been applied to the analysis of sign languages (see [[Phoneme#Phonemes in sign languages|Phonemes in sign languages]]), even though the sublexical units are not instantiated as speech sounds.