Temporal organization of three-consonant onsets in Romanian

Abstract

This study investigates on the basis of EMA data from five speakers the temporal organization of three-consonant onsets in Romanian. In terms of onset-to-vowel timing, the results show that three-consonant clusters do not conform to the predictions of a c-center organization for onsets, and it is argued that this is due to factors pertaining to the degree of coarticulation resistance of the vowel-adjacent consonant and the following vowel. In terms of intra-cluster timing, the results show that timing among the consonants in clusters /spl/, /spr/, /skl/, /skr/ is affected both locally and non-locally by the identity of the liquid.