Syllabic organization and phonetic indices in German stop-lateral clusters

Using articulatory data from five German speakers, we study how segmental sequences under different syllabic organizations respond to perturbations of phonetic parameters in the segments that compose them. Target words contained stop-lateral clusters /bl, gl, kl, pl/ in a word-initial and a cross-word context and were embedded in carrier phrases with different prosodic boundary strengths, i.e., no phrase boundary versus an utterance phrase boundary preceded the target word in the case of word-initial clusters or separated the consonants in the case of cross-word clusters. For word-initial cluster onsets, we find that increasing the lag between two consonants and C1 stop duration leads to earlier vowel initiation and reduced local timing stability across CV and CCV. Furthermore, as the inter-consonantal lag increases, C2 lateral duration decreases. In contrast, for cross-word clusters, increasing the lag between two consonants does not lead to earlier vowel initiation across CV and C#CV and robust local timing stability is maintained across CV and C#CV. Overall, the findings indicate that the effect of phonetic perturbations on the coordination patterns depends on the syllabic organization superimposed on these clusters.