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Free variation in linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
 is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speaker
Native Speaker

Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee?s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a ?native speaker.?...
s. Examples from English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 include:

When phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s are in free variation, speakers are sometimes strongly aware of the fact, and will note, for example, that tomato is pronounced differently in British and American English, or that either has two pronunciations which are fairly randomly distributed.






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Free variation in linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
 is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speaker
Native Speaker

Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee?s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a ?native speaker.?...
s. Examples from English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 include:
  • glottalization
    Glottalization

    Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and voiced consonants is most often realized as creaky voice ....
     of voiceless stops
    Stop consonant

    A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....
     in word-final position: for example, the word stop may be pronounced with a plain unaspirated , , or with a glottalized ,
  • the word economics may be pronounced with or in the first syllable; although individual speakers may prefer one or the other, and although one may be more common in some dialect
    Dialect

    A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
    s than others, both forms are encountered within a single dialect and sometimes even within a single idiolect
    Idiolect

    An idiolect is a Variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of word selection, vocabulary and word lexicon, grammar, or words, phrases, idioms, or pronunciations that are unique to that individual....
  • the comparative
    Comparative

    In grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than, as...as, etc....
     of many disyllabic adjective
    Adjective

    In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
    s can be formed either with the word more or with the suffix
    Affix

    An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
     -er, for example more stupid or stupider.


When phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s are in free variation, speakers are sometimes strongly aware of the fact, and will note, for example, that tomato is pronounced differently in British and American English, or that either has two pronunciations which are fairly randomly distributed. However, only a very small proportion of English words show such variations. In the case of allophones, however, free variation is exceedingly common, and, along with differing intonation patterns, is the most important single feature in the characterising of regional accents.

See also

  • Allomorph
    Allomorph

    An allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound without changing meaning....
  • Allophone
    Allophone

    In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
  • Complementary distribution
    Complementary distribution

    Complementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment....
  • Contrastive distribution
    Contrastive distribution

    Contrastive distribution in linguistics, as opposed to complementary distribution or free variation, is the relationship between two different elements, where both elements are found in the same environment with a change in meaning....
  • Phoneme
    Phoneme

    In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
  • Sociolinguistics
    Sociolinguistics

    Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used....
  • Variable rules analysis