Defective distribution

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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