Epenthesis Versus Gestural Mistiming in Consonant Cluster Production: An Ultrasound Study*

In studies of production and second language acquisition, it is typically assumed that when speakers produce a vowel between the consonants in a sequence that is phonotactically illegal in the native langauge, it is a result of the phonological epenthesis of a vowel (e.g. Tarone 1987, Broselow and Finer 1991, Hancin-Bhatt and Bhatt 1998, Davidson, Jusczyk and Smolensky 2003). For example, Tarone (1987) reported that Korean speakers learning English repaired [stop+liquid] clusters by epenthesizing a schwa between the two consonants, e.g. class [k ́læs]. However, the assumption that schwa results from phonological vowel epenthesis has been indirectly challenged by some of the research in the Articulatory Phonology framework. It has been proposed that schwas in English, even ones that are generally accepted to be present underlyingly (as in p[ ́]rade or t[ ́]morrow), do not necessarily need to have their own gesture associated with them, and can be derived acoustically from variations in the coordination and distance between the flanking consonants (Price 1980, Browman and Goldstein 1990, 1992a, b, Smorodinsky 2002). After examining x-ray tracings of tongue movement in nonsense forms like [pip ́pap ́], Browman and Goldstein (1992b) ultimately conceded that the tongue position for English schwa was not simply a smooth interpolation between the flanking consonants and vowels, and that it likely does have its own gestural target. However, though English schwas may not be “targetless”, other languages, such as Sierra Popoluca, Piro, and