Tongue root position during Mandarin Chinese stops

Abstract

Tongue root advancement is reported to be an adjustment that facilitates phonetic voicing during stop closure (Westbury 1983). In a recent ultrasound study, Ahn (2018) reports that the tongue root is more advanced during the American English “voiced” stops than the “voiceless” stops even without actual phonetic voicing during “voiced” stops, suggesting that tongue root adjustment might not be tied to phonetic voicing, but rather implementation of a more abstract contrast. The current ultrasound study compares tongue root position during Mandarin Chinese voiceless unaspirated stops /p, t, k/ and voiceless aspirated stops /ph, th, kh/. These two Mandarin categories are acoustically similar to English “voiced” and “voiceless” stops in phrase-initial position. To confirm the role of tongue root advancement in English “voiced” stops, this study investigates eight native Mandarin speakers' phrase-initial stops. If the tongue root configurations during Mandarin aspirated and unaspirated stops are similar to each other, unlike those during English “voiced” and “voiceless” stops, English and Mandarin arguably have different types of contrast. On the other hand, if Mandarin shows comparable results to English, it further confirms that the tongue root advancement may have a different motivation than merely facilitating phonetic voicing.