Flaps and Other Variants of /t/ in American English: Allophonic Distribution without Constraints, Rules, or Abstractions*

The distribution of the flap allophone [n] of American English, along with the other allophones of /t/, [t5, t , …, t] has been accounted for in various formal frameworks by = assuming a number of different abstract mechanisms and entities. The desirability or usefulness of these formalisms is not at issue in the present paper. Instead, a computationally explicit model of categorization is used (Skousen 1989, 1992) in order to account for the distribution of the allophones of /t/ without recourse to such formalisms. The simulations that were carried out suggest that they are not needed because analogy to surface apparent variables such as phones and word boundaries is sufficient to predict allophony. In analogy, the particular allophone of /t/ (i.e. [n, t5, t , …, t]) that appears in a given = context is determined on the basis of similarity to stored exemplars in the mental lexicon. From an acquisitional standpoint, categorization by analogy to stored exemplars dispenses with the need for rule induction although it does suggest that speakers group functionally related sounds into mental categories, a process that is influenced to a great deal by