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Linguistics

Notes Modern English therefore contains both /f/ and /v/. However, the situation was very different in
Old English, as the examples in (3) show.
3. Old English
hla[v]ord <hlaford> ‘lord’ heo[v]on <heofon> ‘heaven’
æ[f]ter <æfter> ‘after’ [f]isc <fisc> ‘fish’
o[v]er <ofer> ‘over’
heal [f] <healf> ‘half’
Instead of minimal pairs, we find predictable, complementary distribution, with [v] appearing
medially, between vowels, and [f] in other positions. Consequently, [f] and [v] can be analysed as
allophones of one phoneme, which we might call [f]: Old English speakers would have regarded [f]
and [v] as the same, just as Modern English speakers think of [k] and [c] as the same sound. Later in
the history of English, many words like very, virtue and veal were borrowed from French, bringing
with them initial [v], which had not previously been found in English. The distribution of [f] and [v]
therefore ceased to be complementary, since both could appear in word-initial position, creating
minimal pairs like very and ferry, or veal and feel. In consequence, [v] stopped being an allphone of [f],
and became a phoneme in its own right, producing the opposition of [f] (realised as [f]) and [v]
(realised as [v]) we find today.
10.1 What is Phonology?

According to Bloomfield phonology is the organization of sounds into patterns. In order to fulfil the
communicative functions, languages organize their material, the vocal noises, into recurrent bits and
pieces arranged in sound patterns. It is the study of this formal organisation of languages which is
known as phonology.
What is sound? How and where is it produced from? How is it received by the ears? How and why
is one sound different from the other?—questions like these are the subject-matter of Phonology.
10.2 Difference between Phonetics and Phonology

The difference between phonetics and phonology is that of generality and particularity. Whereas
phonetics is the science of speech sounds, their production, transmission and reception and the signs
to represent them in general with no particular reference to any one language, phonology is the
study of vocal sounds and sound changes, phonemes and their variants in a particular language. If
phonetics can be likened to a world, phonology is a country. Phonetics is one and the same for all the
languages of the world, but the phonology of one language will differ from the phonology of another.
According to John Lyons. “Phonetics differs from phonology.... in that it considers speech sounds
independently of their paradigmatic opposition and syntagmatic combinations in particular
languages,” and that phonology is the level at which the linguist describes the sounds of a particular
language.
The subject-matter of phonology is the selected phonetic material from the total resources available
to human beings from phonetics. The human vocal system can produce a very large number of different
speech sounds. Members of a particular speech community speaking that particular language,
however, use only a limited number of these sounds. Every language makes its own selection of
sounds and organizes them into characteristic patterns. This selection of sounds and their arrangement
into patterns constitute the phonology of the language.
To quote Robins, “Phonetics and phonology are both concerned with the same subject-matter or
aspect of language, speech sounds, as the audible result of articulation, but they are concerned with
them from different points of view. Phonetics is general (that is, concerned with speech sounds as
such without reference to their function in a particular language), descriptive and classificatory:
phonology is particular (having a particular language or languages in view) and functional (concerned
with working or functioning of speech in a language or languages). Phonology has in fact been called
functional phonetics.”

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