Voiceless unaspirated stops occur only elsewhere. This is a complementary distribution. Two classes of sounds are in complementary distribution if there is a context such that one class only occurs there …

Some basic general properties of complementary distributions are given in Section 2 of the current article, partly by way of background to the remainder of the article, and almost entirely for the first time.

Key Fact: If two phones are allophones of the same phoneme, then they must be in complementary distribution.

Look for minimal pairs. In the absence of minimal pairs, look to see if they occur in complementary environments.

This is what we called complementary distribution in Chapter 2. This fits with the idea that there is a single structural position that can be filled with any one of these elements, but not more than once.”

Complementarity and Identity If an entity X has multiple manifestations, then all manifestations of X would be in complementary distribution.

Usually if there is complementary distribution, one target sound will be conditioned by a natural class of sounds. Check to see whether any of the groups of sounds that precede or follow either target sound …