Temporal organization of off-glides in American English

This paper tests the hypothesis that offglides /j/ and /w/ are best analyzed as a syllable coda through examining the temporal organization of offglide gestures within a syllable. Kinematic data were collected from four American English speakers using realtime MRI. The gesture timing of offglides was compared in singleton and complex coda contexts to determine whether offglides exhibit local gestural coordination with the preceding vowel, as would have been predicted by the non-competitive coordination model hypothesized for complex coda. Results show a temporal shift of the offglides when other coda consonants are present, suggesting a different coordination relationship for offglides in English. Accordingly, we propose a unique gestural organization that involves competitive coupling to account for the current findings, which captures both the findings and their dual phonological nature.