ABSTRACT This dissertation research will investigate the production of English consonants in sequence. Articulatory data acquired with the use of a real-time electropalatographic (EPG) system will be used to examine temporal patterns of tongue-palate contact in producing consonant clusters with the goal of describing coproduction of the underlying articulatory gestures. Acoustic data collected simultaneously will be analyzed to determine the spectral consequences of the timing of articulatory events as evidenced in the EPG data. Specifically, this dissertation will address the following questions. 1) What is the effect of speaking rate on the coproduction of consonants in sequence? 2) What changes occur in coproduction of consonantal gestures as the number of consonants in a sequence is varied? 3) Does the spatial and/or temporal pattern of tongue-palate contact vary as a function of the linear order of the consonants in the cluster; that is, does an alveolar different than a velar location of word boundaries in a consonant sequence affect the temporal overlap between the gestures? It is anticipated that this research will provide significant empirical data with which various models of speech production can be further explicated to more accurately mirror articulatory coproduction and temporal organization.
