Prosodic and segmental effects on vowel intrusion duration in Spanish /rC/ clusters

The purpose of this study was to test prosodic and segmental effects on vowel intrusion duration in Spanish /rC/ clusters. For each cluster, I measured the acoustic duration of the intervening intrusive vowel and then analyzed the mean intrusive vowel duration under the scope of seven hypotheses based on prosodic and segmental factors. The current study consisted of twenty-nine participants across six countries and I obtained a total of 496 intrusive vowels. The study suggests that one prosodic factor, namely across a word boundary, and one segmental factor, order of constriction location, significantly affect intrusive vowel duration; data analysis for prosodic stress, heterorganic vs. homorganic, C₂ voicing, and manner and place of articulation did not evidence significant results. Finally, I discuss the findings in theoretical terms, using Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1989, et seq.), including the prosodic (p-) gestural model (Byrd & Saltzman 2003; Byrd et al. 2006).