The temporal organization of complex onsets and codas in Romanian: A gestural approach

This study investigates the temporal organization of a variety of onset and coda consonant clusters in Romanian on the basis of articulatory data from five speakers. The results show that Romanian sibilant–initial complex onsets /sp-, sk-, sm-/ exhibit a global, “c-center” organization, while coda clusters /-sk, -sm, -ps, -ks, -kt, -pt, -mn/ exhibit a local, left-edge organization. These results are compatible with the predictions of the gestural approach to syllable organization (Browman & Goldstein, 2000, Bulletin de la Communication Parlée, 5, 25–34) and corroborate the temporal patterns previously reported for American English and German. Stop-initial clusters /ps-, ks-, kt-, kn-/ on the other hand show a temporal organization at odds with the predictions for onsets, and not readily explainable by additional considerations such as recoverability requirements. The observed temporal pattern may reflect cluster composition particularities, or alternatively a syllable parse different from that of sibilant-initial clusters. The stop-initial cluster results underline the need for systematic cross-linguistic studies on the temporal organization of clusters of varying composition.

► /s/-initial Romanian onsets exhibit a global, “c-center” temporal organization.
► Romanian codas exhibit a local, left-edge temporal organization.
► Romanian stop-initial onsets /ps-, ks-, kt-/ exhibit a local, right-edge organization.
► Results partly support the coupled oscillator model of syllable organization.
► Stop-initial onset pattern may be driven by cluster composition or a different syllable parse.