Forget to. Is the T tapped?

[zoltankr]

Hi, in the phrase "Don't forget to lock up." the word forget ends with a /t/ and the word to starts with a /t/. In this situation we pronounce the /t/ only once. Right? But is the /t/ tapped (aka. flap) in the sentence above? because the /t/ that we join and pronounce only once seems to be between two vowels. Should I pronounce it as a tapped T or as a normal T?

[Daniel]

It depends on speech rate. It's like "got to" versus "gotta". So it can be flapped if it's said quickly-- "forgetta".

[panini]

Flapping in orthographic Verb+to constructions reflects a lexicalized cliticization process, as exemplified by the famous example "Teddy is the man I wanna win" -- ungrammatical except if Teddy is the object of "win". You can do that with woulda, should, gotta, hafta, oughta, coulda, wanna, and these do not always correspond to "to". If the verb is vocoid-final (with no intervening trace), you can flap in casual speech as in "try to go", "not far to go", "say to the boss" where flaps are possible. But you won't find General American English speakers doing this with d- and t- final verbs apart from cliticization case, so not in "forget to close the door", "compute to 5 decimal places", "set to music".

[Daniel]

That's very odd in writing but not bad in fast speech. "Rules" in cases like this are not robust.

[Copernicus]

Well, don't forget that flapping is seldom triggered when there is stress on a following syllable, so I find it hard (albeit not impossible) to flap in that context unless the /u/ in "to" is reduced to schwa.  I can easily replace the final /t/ in "forget" with a glottal stop, but I seem to need vowel reduction to get to the flap.

[Daniel]

...unless the /u/ in "to" is reduced to schwa.

Yes, certainly. I often produce "to" as [tə], so that seems normal to me.

(The form [foɹgɛɾu] is unimaginable!)