Do harmonic consonant clusters in Georgian have only one release?

It has been claimed that in Georgian, a language in the Kartvelian or South Caucasian family of languages, harmonic consonant clusters have a single release. To examine this claim, different constituencies and orderings of harmonic consonant clusters and nonharmonic consonant clusters were recorded and analyzed in order to (1) assess the phonetic reality of the initial claim; and (2) compare durations of cluster releases and whole cluster segments in nonharmonic environments to those, if any, exhibited in harmonic environments. Preliminary results of the relative distribution of release durations across these two groups illustrate an interesting division of release and cluster duration figures and (2) show a possible positive correlation of a sonority hierarchy [G. N. Clements, ‘‘The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification,’’ in Between the Grammar and Physics of Speech, edited by J. Kingston and M. E. Beckman, Papers in Laboratory Phonology 1 (Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, 1990)]. This also builds on previous work on Georgian consonants and their relationship to a sonority hierarchy by McCoy [1995]. The implications for consonant clusters and Georgian phonology are investigated, which in turn suggests some phonological priorities in Georgian.