Trills and taps in variation

Many of the world's languages have an r sound that is described as a tongue‐tip trill. In many cases, the trill is also said to have a tap as a positional variant. However, in other cases, the trill is reported in all positions in a word. Closer examination of descriptions and/or of audio recordings of several languages suggests this universal generalization: The trills always have a tap variant. At least 31 languages all show some variation between a trill and a tap. The generalization holds even for languages in which the trill contrasts with a second r sound. This paper first documents this claim and then considers in more detail whether the trill‐tap variation is consistent in two of the languages. Data will be presented from Indonesian (one r phoneme, a trill), and from Palauan (two r phonemes, a trill and a tap), taking into account rate of speech and segmental context. Preliminary data suggest that the tap is most likely in intervocalic position and at fast speaking rates. Furthermore, the trill variant in these conditions has fewer contacts. The implications of this relationship between trills and taps will be discussed.