Which pair exemplifies low neighborhood density?

Which pair exemplifies low neighborhood density?

• A. The and You
• B. Adventurous and Frequent
• C. Giant and Germ
• D. Mat and Bat

Answer: (C)

Neighborhood density measures how many real words differ from a target by just one phoneme. Low density means there are only a few or even no close neighbors that differ by a single sound. Giant and Germ fit this idea because they share the initial sound but then move into very different phoneme sequences, making it hard to change just one sound to land on another real word. In English, there aren’t many words that are created by altering a single phoneme of giant or germ without changing several sounds, so each word has relatively few one-phoneme neighbors. That sparse set of near-neighbors is what characterizes low neighborhood density. By contrast, a pair like mat and bat shows high density: changing the initial sound yields several common neighbors (pat, cat, sat, etc.), so there are many one-phoneme-different words, indicating high neighborhood density.

Neighborhood density measures how many real words differ from a target by just one phoneme. Low density means there are only a few or even no close neighbors that differ by a single sound.

Giant and Germ fit this idea because they share the initial sound but then move into very different phoneme sequences, making it hard to change just one sound to land on another real word. In English, there aren’t many words that are created by altering a single phoneme of giant or germ without changing several sounds, so each word has relatively few one-phoneme neighbors. That sparse set of near-neighbors is what characterizes low neighborhood density.

By contrast, a pair like mat and bat shows high density: changing the initial sound yields several common neighbors (pat, cat, sat, etc.), so there are many one-phoneme-different words, indicating high neighborhood density.