The effects of syllable timing and syllable sequence type on vowel sandhi in Spanish are investigated in this paper. It is argued that structuralist and generative treatments of vowel sandhi, which are characterized by generalizations about vowel "shortening" and dropping and glide formation, are inadequate because they focus exclusively on segmental phenomena. These analyses ignore the interplay between suprasegmental and segmental phenomena. Generative analyses are also forced to a rule-ordering strategy that, it is argued, is inappropriate for the level of the derivation where the rules apply. The analysis offered here, supported by phonetic evidence, accounts for syllable timing and syllable sequence type, thereby allowing one general statement about the segmental changes that contiguous vowels undergo in sandhi. This eliminates the need for a rule-ordering strategy. The present analysis shows vowel sandhi to be a consequence of suprasegmental timing and syllable sequence type imposed over a two-syllable domain. (Author/KM)