Defective distribution
In linguistics, defective distribution is the distribution of a phoneme that does not appear in all contexts.
The occurrence of phonemes of a language within words is in many cases possible both at the beginning of a word (word initial), within a word (word-internal) and at the end of a word (word-final). If a phoneme does not appear in one of these contexts, one speaks of defective distribution.
Examples
The phoneme / h / does not appear in the final word position in German .
Evidence for the distribution of / h /: [ha ʊ s] [g ə h ɔ lf ə n] * [worth]
The phoneme / z / does not appear as a morpheme or word initial in Italian .
literature
- T. Alan Hall: Basic phonological terms (PDF, 468 kB)
- Pier Marco Bertinetto, Michele Loporcaro: The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome