Abstract
The ability to lock motor activity oscillator with external acoustic events is typical of various forms of human behaviour. Previous research showed that the beginning of an action is not necessarily the beginning of the rhythmic phase and led to the concept of p-centres.
We present an experiment with 18 natural two-syllable Czech words spoken in synchrony with metronome beats by 18 subjects. Complexity of the consonantal onset and the type of coda together with distinctive phonological vowel length were carefully controlled to reveal a complex but comprehensible relationship between the word structure and phase locking.