Influences of Tone on Vowel Articulation in Mandarin Chinese

Purpose Models of speech production often abstract away from shared physiology in pitch control and lingual articulation, positing independent control of tone and vowel units. We assess the validity of this assumption in Mandarin Chinese by evaluating the stability of lingual articulation for vowels across variation in tone. Method Electromagnetic articulography was used to track flesh points on the tongue (tip, body, dorsum), lips, and jaw while native Mandarin speakers (n = 6) produced 3 vowels, /p a /, /p i /, /p u /, combined with 4 Mandarin tones: T1 “high,” T2 “rising,” T3 “low,” and T4 “falling.” Results Consistent with physiological expectations, tones that begin low, T2 and T3, conditioned a lower position of the tongue body for the vowel /a/. For the vowel /i/, we found the opposite effect, whereby tones that begin low, T2 and T3, conditioned a higher tongue body position. Conclusions The physiology of pitch control exerts systematic variation on the lingual articulation of /a/ across tones. The...