summary taps flaps taps flaps summary long ago asked dialectal variation english taps sometimes called flaps many thanks thirty respondents name cite environments general agreement trager description possibly longer accurate although one respondent suggested description might fit southern us accents better northern ones flapping tapping wordfinal stressed syllable possible responded varieties reported leniting flap possibly zero various speakers however noted flaps taps people dialects sounded odd eg words like _ button _ _ eighteen _ seem ok least iambicreversal 18 thorough suggestion came ian mackay intervocalic flapped long following syllable ie syllable containing second two vowels inter carry primary stress second vowel carry significantly stress first vowel proviso word boundaries may block phenomenon nt ask specify nature word boundaries one british respondent said dialect tapping flapping seemed lexically determined determined phonetic environment flap tap possible _ witty _ _ pretty _ _ british _ _ skittish _ churma brought spectre morphological conditioning might also account examples fact still details folks seem unaware like relevance level 2 morpheme boundaries cf flapped secondarily stressed deadjectival elitism vs aspirated denominal magnetism least different aspects problem make clear hard describe properly syllable final syllableinitial ambisyllabic alice turk reports experiments suggest ambisyllabic analysis explanatory also reported solution used kahn respondents argued syllableinitial grounds syllablefinal always glottalised syllablefinal grounds voiceless taps flaps also occurred clear syllablefinal position clearly syllableinitial always aspirated john harris remarked codavs onset issue sure agree competition going resolved simply inspecting data even listening since codas onsets present matter comparing two theories could nt agree especially since aware conflicting definitions ambisyllabicity literature dependency phonology references harris john 1990 phonology 7 harris john kaye 1990 linguistic review harris john 1994 english sound structure blackwell chapter 4 jensen john english phonology kahn daniel 1976 syllable based generalizations english dissertation olive j p greenwoord j coleman 1993 acoustics american english speech springer verlag picard marc 1984 english aspiration flapping revisited canadian journal linguistics 29 4257 turk 1993 effects position syllable stress consonant articulation cornell ph dissertation zue v laferriere 1979 acoustic study medial american english j acoust soc 66 10391050 laurie bauer vuw ac nz department linguistics victoria university po box 600 wellington new zealand ph 64 4 472 1000 x 8800 fax 64 4 471 2070