This paper investigates the effects of contrastive focal accent placement on lingual articulation and coarticulation of French [kskl] clusters in word-medial position. The EPG results show that (i) this type of accent does not systematically increase the amplitude, but the duration of linguopalatal constrictions (particularly their release); (ii) i t directly lengthens the temporal interval between the articulatory hold phases of two contiguous consonants; (iii) no matter what the accent position is, it can affect the whole cluster; (iv) the gestural coordination of biconsonant sequences seemed to vary with the focal accent more according to articulatory than syllable boundary rhytmic constraints.