Austronesian languages have been characterized as having simple syllable structures, despite vowel reduction and deletion (historically and synchronically) across the family Blust 2013. Palauan, a Malayo-Polynesian language of the western Pacific, challenges this position, allowing for various typologically rare consonant clusters word-initially Flora 1974; Josephs 1975. However, to date, there has been no phonetic study of these clusters. Acoustic evidence of coarticulation with adjacent sounds and resyllabification across the preceding word boundary is observed, suggesting that clusters with different combinations of C1 and C2 exhibit varying degrees of gestural overlap. This study utilizes acoustic and articulatory data to investigate how word-initial bi-consonant clusters are produced in Palauan. Four native speakers of Palauan were recorded reading 26 tokens with word-initial bi-consonant clusters comprising 13 unique C1–C2 combinations. Tokens were read in carrier sentences with vowels and liquids preceding the target. Clusters were coded for place and manner of articulation and tongue movement at three time points. Tongue movement values were plotted for each cluster. Results show that heterogeneity in the place of articulation of C1 and C2 facilitates increased gestural overlap. The findings also suggest that sonorants in the C1 position are more likely to resyllabify to the preceding word.
Bialo et al. (Wed,) studied this question.