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Phonological analysis relies on the principle that certain sounds cause changes in the meaning of a word or phrase, whereas other sounds do not.
—David Crystal, 1987
In the Disney cartoon "Lion King", the lion prince Simba leaves his kingdom and exiles in an alien land, where he meets Timon and Pumbaa. Simba enjoys being with his new friends, but feels very frustrated in learning their songs. Why? Because the little lion is an English speaker, and English doesn't have such sound sequences such as [tʃk] and [dʒg] in Timon's song "chk, chk, chk, jg, jg, jg ...". However, such "abnormal" sound sequences are just normal sound patterns in Swahili—the most widely spoken African language.
However, as we discussed in the previous chapter, the sound segments [tʃ], [k], [g] and [dʒ] are frequently used by English speakers. For example, [tʃ] and [k] in "cheek", or, [dʒ] and [g] in "giga". Then why do [tʃk] and [dʒg] sound abnormal? The reason is that these sequences of sounds do not fall into the SOUND PATTERNs of English.
Through the phonetic study, we have gained some basic ideas about the sounds that the human voice is capable of creating. We are also aware that different languages, such as English and Chinese, may make use of different sounds and sound patterns. In this chapter, we are turning our focus from the individual sound segments to the sound system of a language, i. e. the study of sound patterns. We are going to see how a subset of human speech sounds is organized to form meaningful sequences in the system of a language. To work this out, consider the following questions first:
(1) How do we know what sounds are functional in a language?
(2) What changes will take place when sounds appear in different "sound" environments?
(3) How do these sounds form sequences of sounds in the language?
(4) In addition to the phonetic features, what other features may convey meanings in speaking?
To answer the above questions, we are studying PHONOLOGY.
In the study of phonology, we will have to keep in our mind the close relationship between phonology and phonetics. The phonological study focuses on the meaning and function of sounds in a given language. However, the study of meaning and function relies on the analysis of the phonetic properties of these sounds. In fact, the two studies are so closely related that most of the principles in one will be applicable in the other. In this chapter, we will focus on the above phonological topics, and refer frequently to what we discussed in the previous chapter.