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Distribution of Sounds
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Sound distribution explained
One can distinguish three distribution pattern of sounds in words. They can either occur in contrastive distribution, complementary distribution or free variation.
Contrastive distribution:
Two sounds are said to occur in contrastive distribution if an exchange of one sound for the other leads to a different meaning of the word. For example, if we take the initial sound of /bin/ and replace it with /p/, the word becomes /pin/ which has a completely different meaning. Thus, /b/ and /p/ serve to contrast meaning. Contrastive sounds, or oppositions as they are also called, can appear in all positions: word-initially, word-medially and in final position. In order to test whether sounds form oppositions, we can apply a so-called "commutation test". This works just like our /pin, bin/ example. That means we exchange one sound with another and see whether we get a different lexical item. However, the sound has to occur at exactly the same position and we can only replace one sound at a time. Usually, phonologically similar sounds are replaced, i.e. /p/ with /b/, /t/ with /d/, /g/ with /k/ and so on and so forth. But this does not necessarily have to be the case. We can also exchange the /d/ in bid with /l/ to form /bil/, bill, to see that /d/ and /l/ occur in contrastive distribution.
The concept of contrastive distribution is very important since different languages contrast different sounds in different positions. So only because two sounds contrast meaning in English, it does not mean that they do the same in other languages. In German, for instance, /d/ and /t/ do not serve to distinguish meaning when they occur at the end of words.
Complementary distribution:
In contrast to contrastive distribution, sounds which occur in complementary distribution do not change the meaning of words. Thus, they are not phonemes but different allophones of one phoneme. (For a detailed discussion of phones, phonemes and allophones, click here).
In English there are, for instance, two different realisations of the phoneme /l/. If the sound appears before a vowel and/or at the beginning of a syllable, it is realised as a so-called 'clear l'. In all other positions it is pronounced as a 'dark l'. The difference in the sounds is that the lips are a lot more rounded for the production of the latter, almost as much as in a /u/, and while the tongue is almost at the alveolar ridge for the clear l, the position of the tongue can be described as more palatalised for the dark l. It is important to note that the speaker cannot decide which allophone he or she wants to use in which context, rather one allophone can only occur in one context while the other can only occur in another. Hence, they complement each other. The meaning does not change because of a different articulation of the sound.
Free variation:
Allophones of a phoneme do not necessarily have to occur in complementary distribution but can also appear in free variation. In contrast to complementary distribution, however, free variation is solely based on speakers' individual choices, there are no rules telling speakers which allophone to use in which context. For instance, in Received Pronunciation (RP) the /r/ is most often realised as an alveolar approximant (the /r/ that is also used by American speakers). Nonetheless, the alveolar tap can sometimes be found in RP as well, often between vowels as in very or boring but also after fricatives, i.e. in three. But in contrast to complementary distribution there is no rule governing the use of /r/. All allophones are equally appropriate in any given position of a word. As with complementary distribution, the different allophones of a phoneme do not serve to distinguish meaning either. So whether we use the "normal" /r/ or a variant does not change the meaning of a word.
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