What is the origin of the word phonology?
The word phonology comes from Ancient Greek phōnē, meaning voice or sound. It pairs with the suffix -logy, derived from lógos, which translates to word, speech, or subject of discussion.
Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word phonology comes from Ancient Greek phōnē, meaning voice or sound. It pairs with the suffix -logy, derived from lógos, which translates to word, speech, or subject of discussion.
Nikolai Trubetzkoy defined phonology in 1939 as the study of sound pertaining to the system of language. He distinguished this from phonetics, which he called the study of sound pertaining to the act of speech.
Pānini wrote the fourth century BCE Ashtadhyayi Sanskrit grammar that included an inventory of phonemes. The auxiliary Shiva Sutras provided a notational scheme deployed throughout the main text.
A French linguist named A. Dufriche-Desgenettes coined the word phoneme in 1873. He proposed it as a one-word equivalent for the German Sprachlaut during a meeting of the Société de Linguistique de Paris.
Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English in 1968. This work formed the basis for generative phonology.