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This paper investigates the relative timing of onset consonant and vowel gestures in Tibetan as spoken in the Tibetan diaspora. According to the coupled oscillator model of articulatory timing (Browman & Goldstein 2000, Nam & Saltzman 2003), the most readily-available coupling modes among gestures are in-phase (synchronous) or anti-phase (sequential) timing, with competition among these modes also giving rise to a stable timing pattern. The model predicts that other timing relations, i.e. ”eccentric timing”, are possible but not as readily available. Data gathered using electromagnetic articulography (EMA) shows relative C-V timing consistent with either competitive coupling or eccentric timing. Competitive coupling is a plausible explanation for CV syllables in a tone language (Gao 2008), but acoustic analysis showed that some speakers do not produce a pitch contrast corresponding to tone. In the apparent absence of a tone gesture, we conclude that these speakers exhibit eccentric C-V timing. 

This paper investigates the relative timing of onset consonant and vowel gestures in Tibetan as spoken in the Tibetan diaspora. According to the coupled oscillator model of articulatory timing (Browman & Goldstein 2000, Nam & Saltzman 2003), the most readily-available coupling modes among gestures are in-phase (synchronous) or anti-phase (sequential) timing, with competition among these modes also giving rise to a stable timing pattern. The model predicts that other timing relations, i.e. ”eccentric timing”, are possible but not as readily available. Data gathered using electromagnetic articulography (EMA) shows relative C-V timing consistent with either competitive coupling or eccentric timing. Competitive coupling is a plausible explanation for CV syllables in a tone language (Gao 2008), but acoustic analysis showed that some speakers do not produce a pitch contrast corresponding to tone. In the apparent absence of a tone gesture, we conclude that these speakers exhibit eccentric C-V timing.