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Son, Minjung. 2013. Gestural Reduction of Lateral Approximant /l/ in Triconsonantal Environments in Korean. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 38-2, 367-396. This study examine what kinematic characteristics a Korean lateral /l/ demonstrates in a triconsonantal context (/jəlp+ta/) in comparison with biconsonantal (/jəl+ta/). Unlike other previous studies, we did not observed any single instance of deleting /l/ in the triconsoanntal sequence. Nevertheless, it was obvious that speakers had a lateral /l/ in the /lp+t/ sequences reduced. Looking at data pooled across subjects, there was a main effect of Cluster type (/lp+t/ vs. /l+t/) on five variables (i.e., the peak velocity, movement duration, acceleration duration, displacement, and constriction duration) while it was not so on five variables (i.e., the constriction maxima, transconsonantal duration, horizontal tongue tip position at the time point aligned with the left and right edges of the vertical tongue tip gesture, and horizontal tongue tip travel distance). Regardless of the results from data pooled across subjects, there was inter-speaker variability, consistently being indicative of gestural reduction, if there was any, for triconsonantal /lp+t/ sequences. Based on the results, two issues pertinent to gestural reduction of /l/ were discussed. First, we found that, for some speakers, there were close relationships among speech of articulator's movement, temporal duration, and spatial displacement (i.e., lower peak velocity - longer duration - greater displacement). The results, being distinct from stop effects in Korean, boundary effects or accentuation effects in American English, could be accounted for as we referred to a dynamics principle. We also observed coarticulatory effects of a lateral in the triconsonantal /lp+t/ sequences, whose articulation reflected more assimilatory articulation in the interaction with a labial /p/. This was interpreted as another indication of gestural reduction. (Hannam University)