Abbreviation of consonants in English pre- and post-vocalic clusters

Abstract

Several types of pre-vocalic and post-vocalic two-consonant clusters were examined in isolated stressed monosyllables. Acoustical segment durations were generally shorter in clusters. Effects of place relationships within clusters suggested that timing of a consonant’s articulatory commands may be reorganized to allow overlapping when the articulations of the two phones are independent and hence compatible. This independence appears not to be completely predictable from the feature specification but partly a matter of individual variation. These coarticulatory effects were smaller than effects such as elongation of phones in absolute final position. In some clusters, a lengthening in morpheme-final position may have disturbed the effects of clustering. Implications for a model of coarticulation were drawn.