Flapping of apical stops in American English

Abstract

One fundamental assumption in all theories of phonology has always been that neutralization rules have the power to obliterate the contrast between segments in certain environments. For example, American English is well known for its neutralization of intervocalic, poststressed /t/ and /d/ to an apical “flap” [ɾ]. However, acoustic analysis of five pairs of English words produced by five native speakers of American English revealed that flapping of apical stops is a near‐neutralization process. Furthermore, in a listening test, American listeners were able to distinguish underlying /t/ and /d/ with about 69% accuracy—significantly better than chance. This suggests that segmental feature analysis oversimplifies the speech production and perception processes, since it states in advance the facts to be accounted for in phonology. Results of this study seem to call into question the current formulations of neutralization rules and related concepts. The findings will be interpreted in terms of their consequences for the presence of temporal implementation rules. [Research supported by Yarmouk University, Jordan.]