Distributional analysis in its various forms is widely used nowadays by lexicologists. By distribution we understand the occurrence of a lexical unit relative to other lexical units of the same level (words relative to words, morphemes relative to morphemes, etc.). In other words by this term we understand the position which lexical units occupy or may occupy in the text or in the flow of speech, e.g.: he teaches; she plays.
Distribution and meaning are interdependent. It is only the distribution of otherwise completely identical lexical units that accounts for the difference in the meaning of water tap and tap water, life-boat and boat-life.
It should be noted that not only words in a word-group but also whole word-groups may acquire a certain denotational meaning due to a certain distributional pattern to which this particular meaning is habitually attached. E.g., habitually the word preceding ago denotes a certain period of time (an hour ago, a month ago) and the whole word-group denotes a certain temporal unit. In this particular distributional pattern any word is bound to acquire an additional lexical meaning of a certain period of time (a grief ago, three cigarettes ago). Distributional pattern as such seems to possess a component of meaning not to be found in individual words making up the word-group (a grief, a cigarette).
Distributional analysis is mainly applied by the linguists to find out sameness or difference of meaning, e.g.: cage-bird - bird-cage; boat-life - life-boat.
By distribution we understand the aptness of a word in one of its meanings to collocate or to co-occur with a certain group, or certain groups of words having some common semantic component, e.g.: He stopped at the corner of the street. - He stopped to greet me. - He stopped writing; blind man, girl, etc., blind passion, love, fury; blind handwriting, type.
This analysis is used in word-formation too, to find out the word-meaning, the lexical restrictions of the stem, the part of speech, etc. Thus, the analysis of the derivational pattern N + ish shows that the suffix -ish is practically never combined with the noun-stems denoting units of time, space, etc. ("nourish"). They are usually noun-stems denoting living beings (clownish, boyish, etc.), and colour (reddish).