Emergent phonology

0. Speech and phonology As is well known the physical properties of speech are determined by a large number of factors. They vary depending on the language spoken, on the age, gender and identity of the speaker. They undergo stylistical modifications in innumerable ways owing to the interaction of physiological, cognitive, social and communicative factors. Linguistics deals with this problem by assigning the study of the speech signal to phonetics. Phonology investigates postulated sound structure, that is abstract entities and processes which are assumed to underlie speech behavior and which are by definition independent of performance and language use. In this way, the study of speech sounds is split into two: Phonology becomes digital, and phonetics analog.