Analysis of Language. Linguists divide the study of spoken language into two categories--phonology and grammar. Phonology is the study of sounds. Grammar is how the sounds are used to make sense. Phonology. The smallest unit of sound that can be altered to change the meaning of a word is called a phoneme. In English, for example, the words gin, kin, pin, sin, tin, and win all have different meaning due to the fact that the initial sound, or phoneme, is different.