Phonology

By King Meera -
The selection of speech sounds that form the sound system of a language, and their combination and organization to form words is studied under phonology. English (of Received Pronunciation) has 44 speech sounds - 12 pure vowels, 8 diphthongs, and 24 consonants. Each language organizes the sounds in its sound system differently. For instance, Tamil, Hindi and English all have the voiceless velar plosive [k], and while all three languages permit [k] in word beginnings, and Hindi and English allow [k] in word endings, Tamil does not. Or where words English and Hindi may end in vowels and consonants, the phonology of Kannada doesn't permit consonants to end words. Or even within English, a word may begin with three consonant sounds, only such that the first is [s], the second is [p], [t], or [k], and the third is [l], [r], [j], or [w].

Phoneme theory:
Two or more variants of a sound (members - allophones (of the phoneme)) may occur in mutually exclusive, predictable phonetic environments and therefore can be grouped together into a single family of sounds (phoneme). The phoneme is the abstraction whereas the allophone is the actual sound produced. Note that phonetic and not phonemic transcription can indicate the exact realization of each phoneme.

(Let us quickly run through syllables - a syllable is made up of 0-3 releasing consonants, a vowel (usually the nucleus), and 0-4 arresting consonants; an open syllable is devoid of arresting consonants; "stress" is determined by length of duration of articulation in the word - the longest-sounding syllable is the stressed syllable)
Allophones of [p] - voiceless bilabial plosive
a. pʰ aspirated if in the beginning of the word (pie), or in the stressed syllable
b. p unaspirated if preceded by voiced alveolar fricative [s] (spoon, spill), or in the unstressed or weak syllable (appreciate)
c. pͫ nasally exploded if followed by voiced bilabial nasal [m], as in topmost
d. p˺ inaudibly released if at the end of the word (like cup), if followed by an affricate (capture, caption), if followed by a plosive (captain)

Allophones of [t] - voiceless alveolar plosive
a. tʰ aspirated in the beginning of the word (like totally) (ah yet another accidental pun) and in the accented (stressed) syllable
b. t not aspirated in a weak syllable or if preceded by s (still)
c. tL lateral when followed by voiced alveolar lateral [l] (battle, little)
d. tN nasal when followed by voiced alveolar nasal [n] (cotton, button)
e. t˺ inaudibly released at the end of the word (at) or if followed by plosive or affricate

Allophones of [k] – voiceless velar plosive
a. kʰ aspirated if in the beginning of the word or if in the accented syllable
b. k not aspirated in the weak syllable of if preceded by [s] (score)
c. k˺ inaudibly released at the end of the word or if followed by a plosive
b, d, g, affricates (no variations), fricatives, nasals, lateral, r remain

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