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.
Diachronic (historical) phonology examines and constructs theories about the
changes and modifications in speech sounds and sound systems over a period
of time. For example, it is concerned with the process by which the English
words “sea” and “see,” once pronounced with different vowel sounds (as
indicated by the spelling), have come to be pronounced alike
today. Synchronic (descriptive) phonology investigates sounds at a single stage
in the development of a language, to discover the sound patterns that can
occur.

Phonology is defined as the study of sound patterns and their meanings,

both within and across languages.

a. An example of phonology is the study of different sounds and the way

they come together to form speech and words - such as the comparison
of the sounds of the two "p" sounds in "pop-up."
b. An example of phonology is the study of the movements the body goes
through in order to create sounds - such as the pronounciation of the
letter "t" in "bet," where the vocal chords stop vibrating causing the
"t" sound to be a result of the placement of the tongue behind the teeth
and the flow of air.

Volume of sound system

Tone' is the change in the pitch, which affects the meaning (lexically or in
some other way). Tones can be level tones, i.d. they don't change in time, or
contour tones, i.d. they pitch makes a figure, for instance rising, falling,
falling-rising and so on.

 'Tone' is a phonemic feature, in an analogous way that 'tone' and

'town' have contrastive meanings due to the different vowels
(diphthongs). Some languages have contrasts based on vowel length,
e.g. Finnish; some have contrasts based on nasality, e.g. French. In
tonal languages, contrasts can be created by tone--which is the
relative, perceived pitch contour that carry certain phonemic values.
Accent' is perhaps a bit ambiguous. The strict meaning is 'stress' or
'prominence'. Accented syllables are made clearly distinct from the other
syllables by putting more effort on them, uttering them more loudly or using a
higher pitch. Accented syllables are not necessarily

stressed; there are languages that don't use stress but still make some of their
syllables prominent, which means accented. On the other hand, I have seen in
a linguistic work the term 'accent' in the meaning it is usually used in
everyday English, that is 'distinct pronunciation', meaning that the speech in
question does not have other dialectical differences than pronunciation.

'Accent' is a phonological concept -- it means some way of deliverying

'prominence' -- this can be achieved by making it louder, raising the pitch, or
altering articulation. The prominence can serve different purposes: lexical
contrast (e.g. 'content vs. con'tent), pragmatic function (intonation),
grammatical function (e.g. forming questions by terminal raising), and
paralinguistic features.

Pitch' means how high the sound is. Pitch is a perceptual and subjective
impression. If we look at the physical side, we speak of 'frequency'. Frequency
means how many Hz the sound has, whereas pitch tells how the listener
perceives it.

'Pitch' is the perception of frequency. This is similar to how 'loudness' is

the perception of sound pressure (which is a physical event). Look, sound at
different frequencies have to have varying degrees of intensity to be perceived
as equally loud

Distinctive and Non Distinctive Sounds

Distinctive: Two sounds are “distinctive” w.r.t. one another if sounds

differences cause a distinction in meaning. One way to determine whether two
sounds in a language are distinctive is to identify a minimal pair which is a
pair of words that differ only by a single sound in the same position, and
which have different meanings but which are otherwise identical.
 (2) bill; dill; gill, rib; rid; rig

(3) beat; boot, book; beak

(4) moon vs. good? duty vs. cook? thin vs. that?

distinctive feature: When a feature distinguishes one phoneme from

another, it is a distinctive feature. This difference also accounts for the
meaning difference. See the following minimal pairs.

(17) seal vs. zeal

In (17), the distinctive feature [voice] tells [s] from [z]. The two are
contrasting phonemes. But the two are neither allophones nor in
complementary distribution. The only difference is the distinctive feature
[voicing].

(18) bat/mat, rack/rock, see/zee

Nondistinctive features are identical phonemes, no different meanings,

but just allophones. The allophones are predictable, redundant,
nondistinctive, and nonphonemic. Example 1: nasality

(19) bean/bead The nasality feature occur before syllable-word-final nasal

consonants. But the nasality doesn’t contribute to phonemes in English.
Example 2: aspiration

(20) a. possible in the syllable initial position or before a stressed vowel: pill,
till, kill, etc b. not possible after a syllable initial /s/: spill, still, skill