The present experimental study examines syllable constituent durations as a function of syllable structure, lexical stress and focus. In accordance with a production experiment, the results indicate that both syllable structure and lexical stress have significant effects on syllable constituent durations but not focus. Syllable structure has a compensatory temporal effect, according to which open syllables have longer nucleus vowels but shorter onset consonants in comparison to closed syllables. Lexical stress has a lengthening effect on all syllable constituents, in the order nucleus vowel > onset consonant > coda consonant. Onset consonants and nucleus vowels showed significant interactions between syllable type and lexical stress, which indicates extensive variability of segment duration in accordance with prosodic structure and prosodic context of spoken utterances.