Consonant cluster production and the phonetics-phonology interface – articulatory and acoustic evidence from Polish-English bilinguals

Examining Polish-English bilingual speakers, we investigate the degree of phonetic synchronicity between C1 and C2 in stop-sonorant and /s/-initial clusters. In the first experiment, articulatory data – gathered with electromagnetic articulography (EMA) – reveal longer target-to-target lags in Polish than English for stop-initial clusters, but no effect for /s/-initial clusters. A lesser amount of articulatory overlap for L1 Polish stop-initial clusters was also observable in the acoustic duration of C2, which was longer in L1 Polish than in L2 English. The second experiment gathered acoustic C2 duration data from a larger number of speakers, replicating the effects described in Experiment 1 for stop-initial clusters, and also revealing a less robust effect for /s/-initial clusters. A phonological interpretation of the results is presented within the Onset Prominence representational framework, whose phonotactic mechanisms allow for distinct structural representation of the “same” cluster across languages.