Coarticulation of consonant clusters in Italian learners of French

The present study focuses on how Italian learners of French as L2 coarticulate French heterosyllabic sibilant sequences and how speech rate influences the production of these non-native sequences. As in Italian consonant sequences are less frequent than in French and very rarely appear across word boundary, the hypothesis is that a different degree of coarticulation is found in clusters produced by French, as reported in the literature, and by Italian learners of French. First results appear to confirm our expectations. A small degree of coarticulation characterises clusters produced by Italian, especially in comparison to what has been observed for French natives even if at a fast speech rate some cases of place assimilation are observed.