Flapping /T/ In Australia. a Development Prognosis in General Australian English

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Bamberg, course: Australian English, language: English, abstract: This paper will study the flapping /t/ as it is today and its possible evolution in the nearer future in General Australian English. Australian English (AusE), as it is today, is an English accent that counts with own and also shared features when compared to other variants of English. One of the phenomena that can be encountered in AusE is the realization of a flapped or tapped /t/ allophone (Honeybone 3), a tap alveolar, which is a quality that can easily be perceived when hearing Australians speak. After thoroughly revising English linguistic books though, it is remarkable that few authors appoint this phonetical process to also being part of AusE, but rather of American or Irish English nature among others; some do actually talk about this phenomenon as being also present in English spoken in the southern hemisphere, but they usually don't specify in which territories, which does not help the reader to find enough information about this specific subject when needed. Furthermore, Some AusE linguists seem to ignore this phenomenon when writing their research papers. Opportunely, there are a few authors who do correlate this as also being an AusE feature. This being said, their investigation will be taken as a starting point for further research on this subject.The study to follow will target to get enough information about the flapping /t/ in AusE, trying to focus as much as possible in General AusE, by pointing out what it is, how it emerged and what is the current status of the phenomenon, in order to later on be able to compare these pieces of information with an own research on the ongoing situation based on recordings, which will then lead us to answer to the main question of this paper: What possible development can we expect from the flapping /t/ phenomenon in Australia?