"Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically organize their phones or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs."
The study of how speech sounds are organized and used in languages.
Phoneme: The basic unit of sound in a language that distinguishes meaning.
Allophone: A variant of a phoneme that occurs in a particular phonetic environment.
Phonological rule: A rule that governs the way in which phonemes are combined to form words.
Phonotactics: The study of the permissible combinations of phonemes within a language.
Syllable: A unit of sound consisting of one or more phonemes that form a single, uninterrupted sound.
Stress: The emphasis placed on a particular syllable in a word.
Intonation: The rise and fall of pitch in speech that conveys meaning, mood, and emphasis.
Phonological processes: The systematic sound changes that occur in a language over time.
Phonological features: The distinctive attributes of phonemes that distinguish them from one another.
Morphophonemics: The study of the way in which morphemes (smallest units of meaning) are pronounced in different contexts.
"The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety."
"At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages."
"But may now relate to any linguistic analysis either."
"Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages."
"The building blocks of signs are specifications for movement, location, and handshape."
"At first, a separate terminology was used for the study of sign phonology ('chereme' instead of 'phoneme', etc.)."
"But the concepts are now considered to apply universally to all human languages."