Learn about the way different letters create new meanings for a word!
Some words look similar to other words with the exception of one letter.
For example, in English, 'cat' and 'mat' both have /_at/ as their environment, however the first letter is changed. This provides the word with a completely different meaning! The fancy name for this is contrastive distribution.
In Sairupanese, we can also see this pattern. The letter can be switched anywhere in the word - the beginning, middle or even the end!
The charts below demonstrate this phenomenon in Sairupanese:
As you can see, [ctac] 'die' and [stac] 'kill' have the same environment /_tac/, but the first letter is different! This provides us with two completely different words, 'die' and 'kill'.
Now try it yourself!
Identify whether the pairs of words are in contrastive distribution:
1. [hɑsɟRu] ‘heart’ and [hɑsɟɾu] ‘know’
2. [zij] 'ash' and [tip] 'quick'
3. [sɛjo] ‘green’ and [sijo] ‘fire’
Answers:
1. Yes, these words are in contrastive distribution.
2. No, these words are not in contrastive distribution.
3. Yes, these words are in contrastive distribution.
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