phoebe \'fe-be\ Any of three species (family Tyrannidae, suborder Tyr- anni) of suboscine passerines with a habit of twitching their tail when perching. The eastern phoebe (, Sayornis phoebe ) of North America is 7.5 in. (18 cm) long, plain brownish gray above, and paler below. Its call is a brisk “fee-bee” uttered over and over. It makes a mossy nest, strength¬ ened with mud, on a ledge, often under a bridge. Say’s phoebe ( S . saya), a slightly larger bird with buff-hued underparts, occurs in open country in western North America. The black phoebe (S’, nigricans), occurring from the southwestern U.S. to Argentina, is dark above with a white belly.
Phoenicia \fi-'ne-sh9\ Ancient region, Middle East. Corresponding to modern Lebanon, with adjoining parts of Syria and Israel, its chief cities were Sidon, Tyre, and Berot (modern Beirut). The Phoenicians were notable merchants, traders, and colonizers (see Carthage) of the Mediterranean region in the 1st millennium bc. The area was conquered successively by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Macedonians under Alexander the Great. In 64 bc it was incorporated into the Roman province of Syria.
Phoenician \fi-'ne-sh3n\ One of a people of ancient Phoenicia. They were merchants, traders, and colonizers who probably arrived from the Persian Gulf c. 3000 bc. By the 2nd millennium bc they had colonies in the Levant, North Africa, Anatolia, and Cyprus. They traded wood, cloth, dyes, embroideries, wine, and decorative objects; ivory and wood carv¬ ing became their specialties, and the work of Phoenician goldsmiths and metalsmiths was well known. Their alphabet became the basis of the Greek alphabet.
Phoenix \'fe-niks\ City (pop., 2000: 1,321,045), capital of Arizona, U.S. It is located on the Salt River. The river valley was occupied as early as ad 1300 by prehistoric Indians, now known as the Hohokam culture, who disappeared in the early 15th century. A village was founded on the site in 1867 and incorporated as a city in 1881. It became the territorial capi¬ tal in 1889 and state capital in 1912. There was widespread expansion after World War II, with the population quadrupling between 1950 and 1960. Phoenix occupies a semiarid valley surrounded by mountains and irrigated fields; its economy is based on farming, manufacturing, mining, and tourism.
phoenix In ancient Egypt and in classical antiquity, a fabulous bird associated with the worship of the sun. The Egyptian phoenix was said to be as large as an eagle, with brilliant scarlet and gold plumage and a melodious cry. Only one phoenix existed at a time, and it lived no less than 500 years. As its end approached, it built a nest of aromatic boughs and spices, set it on fire, and was consumed in the flames. From the pyre was born a new phoenix, which sealed its predecessor’s ashes in an egg of myrrh and flew to Heliopolis to deposit them on the altar of the sun god. The phoenix thus symbolized immortality. See also fenghuang.
Phoenix Islands Group of eight small coral atolls, Kiribati. Lying in the west-central Pacific Ocean 1,650 mi (2,650 km) southwest of Hawaii, the low, sandy atolls have a total land area of about 11 sq mi (28 sq km)
Moss pink (Phlox subulata)
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Phoenix Park murders ► phosphorus I 1491
and were discovered in the 19th century by U.S. whaling ships. Annexed by Britain in 1889, they were joined to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1937. They became part of independent Kiribati in 1979. Kanton is the only inhabited atoll.
Phoenix Park murders (May 6, 1882) Assassination in Dublin of British officials. The newly arrived chief secretary of Ireland, Lord Fre¬ derick Cavendish, and his undersecretary, Thomas Burke, were walking in Dublin’s Phoenix Park when they were stabbed to death by members of the Invincibles, a radical Irish nationalist secret society. The murders caused a revulsion against terrorism and enabled Charles Stewart Parnell to subordinate the Irish National League to the more moderate Home Rule Party in Parliament.
phoneme Smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another (e.g., the sound p in tap, which differentiates that word from tab and tag). The term is usually restricted to vowels and con¬ sonants, but some linguists include differences of pitch, stress, and rhythm. A phoneme may have variants, called allophones, that differ pho¬ netically without affecting meaning. Phonemes may be recorded with special symbols, such as those of the International Phonetic Alphabet. In transcription, linguists conventionally place symbols for phonemes between slash marks: /p/.
phonetics Study of speech sounds. It deals with their articulation (artic¬ ulatory phonetics), their acoustic properties (acoustic phonetics), and how they combine to make syllables, words, and sentences (linguistic phonet¬ ics). The first phoneticians were Indian scholars (c. 300 bc) who tried to preserve the pronunciation of Sanskrit holy texts. The Classical Greeks are credited as the first to base a writing system on a phonetic alphabet. Modern phonetics began with Alexander Melville Bell (1819-1905), whose Visible Speech (1867) introduced a system of precise notation for writing down speech sounds. In the 20th century linguists focused on developing a classification system that can permit comparison of all human speech sounds. Another concern of modern phonetics is the men¬ tal processes of speech perception.
phonics Vfa-niks\ Method of reading instruction that breaks language down into its simplest components. Children learn the sounds of indi¬ vidual letters first, then the sounds of letters in combination and in simple words. Simple reading exercises with a controlled vocabulary reinforce the process. Phonics-based instruction was challenged by proponents of “whole-language” instruction, a process in which children are introduced to whole words at a time, are taught using real literature rather than read¬ ing exercises, and are encouraged to keep journals in which “creative” spelling is permitted. A strong backlash against whole-language teaching polarized these two approaches to reading instruction. Many schools have since come to use a combination of the two techniques.
phonograph or record player Instrument for reproducing sounds. A phonograph record stores a copy of sound waves as a series of undu¬ lations in a wavy groove inscribed on its rotating surface by the record¬ ing stylus. When the record is played back, another stylus (needle) responds to the undulations, and its motions are then reconverted into sound. Its invention is generally credited to Thomas Alva Edison (1877). Stereophonic systems, with two separate channels of information in a single groove, became a commercial reality in 1958. All modern phono¬ graph systems had certain components in common: a turntable that rotated the record; a stylus that tracked a groove in the record; a pickup that con¬ verted the mechanical movements of the stylus into electrical impulses; an amplifier that intensified these electrical impulses; and a loudspeaker that converted the amplified signals back into sound. Phonographs and records were the chief means of reproducing recorded sound at home until the 1980s, when they were largely replaced by recorded cassettes (see tape recorder) and compact discs.
phonology \f9-'na-l3-je\ Study of sound patterns within languages. Diachronic (historical) phonology traces and analyzes changes in speech sounds and sound systems over time (e.g., the process by which sea and see, once pronounced with different vowel sounds, have come to be pro¬ nounced alike). Synchronic (descriptive) phonology investigates sound patterns at a single stage in a language’s development, to identify which ones can occur and in what position (in English, for example, nt and rk appear within or at the end of words but not at the beginning).