Consonant clusters in Russian speech 
of an Ust-Nyukzha Evenki speaker

The current paper investigates L1-induced interference pattens in manifestation of consonant clusters in the Russian speech of a female speaker of the Ust-Nyukzha local accent of Evenki. The subject pronounced words containing word-initial, word-medial and word-final clusters. The recorded material was processed using auditory and acoustic analysis. As a result, we identified the phenomenon of plus-minus segmentation. The most characteristic patterns were dieresis, epenthesis and realization consonants that are normally mute. Dieresis was found in word-initial clusters containing an initial fricative followed by a consonant of any manner of articulation. There were very few instances of consonant drop from word-final clusters. Epenthesis involving the insertion of ɨ-, ɛ-, ɑ- or u-like vowels into a consonant cluster was observed either in word-initional or word-final positions, typically before the sonorants /r/, /l/. A pattern of assimilating the epenthetic vowel to the vowel following the cluster was identified. Among consonants that had to be normally mute but were still pronounced by the subject in multi-consonant clusters, were /d/, /f/, /l/.