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Part 6
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Part 6
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So, to answer the last question, Batman and Superman must belong to different phonemes, because they can both appear in the context of being a hero, and are therefore in overlapping distribution.
Another useful term to know is contrastiveness. When sounds are in overlapping distribution, they are contrastive. This is to indicate that the sounds can create lexical contrasts.
What does that mean?
Basically, it means that you can change the meaning of a word simply by changing one of the sounds to another. For example, if you have the word pat 
, you can change the meaning of the word to something else by changing the 
to a 
, giving you the word bat 
. Therefore, the sounds and are contrastive.
Take the word pat again. If you change the to 
, is the result a different word? Not in English, it isn't. It sounds a little strange, but it's still recognizable. Therefore, these sounds are not contrastive.
In this lesson, we looked at concepts of sound distribution. If sounds are in complementary distribution, they cannot appear in the same contexts. If sounds are in overlapping distribution.
Furthermore, if sounds are in complementary distribution, they are allophones of the same phoneme. If sounds are in overlapping distribution, they are allophones of different phonemes.
If sounds are allophones of different phonemes, they are contrastive.