An Investigation Of Tongue Movement In The Production Of Mandarin's Basic Vowels Using Ultrasound

Based on the of application of ultrasonic imaging technology, the present dissertation studied tongue shape figure in the production of seven basic monothongs /a/,/i/,/u/,/(?)/,/y/,/(?)/,/(?)/ in Standard Chinese produced by four native speakers. Under the framework of Articulatory Phonology, we divided the tongue movement during a sound's production into five stages. For the seven basic vowels in Mandarin, we discussed the way of tongue shape change from stage two (S2) to stage four (S4), from the angle of original data observation, data analysis, analysis of articulatory gesture and the distribution in physiological space of articulation separately.The results showed that, among the different stages of each vowel's production, the tongue shape was experienced corresponding shape change. As the most stable one in the five stages, S3 covered the whole period of sound vocing. In S3, the tongue shape for each basic vowel reached its articulatory gesture in a specific time. However, even though all of the basic vowels had a relatively stable S3, the stable degree and the terminal time of articulatory gesture for them were observably different.Based on the profermence of each vowel's tongue shape in S3, we parsed the articulatory gestures of these vowels under the framework of Articulatory Phonology. Meanwhile, we discussed the issues such as the stableness of Standard Chinese's cardinal vowels /a/,/i/,/u/, the transitional charachteristic of /(?)/, the feauture of outer rounding /y/ and the targetless characteristic of apical vowels /(?)/,/(?)/.In view of the importance of tongue shape's highest point in distinguishing different vowels, we also analyzed S3s'highest point of the tongue shape for all the basic vowels under the framework of Vowel's Sound Pattern. First, by referring to the analytical procedure for calculating V Value, which is the index of a vowel's distribution in vowel's acoustic space of articulation, we advanced the S Equation for calculating S Value, the index of a vowel's distribution in physiological space of articulation. Then, by using the data of tongue shapes'highest points in S3, we calculated the S values of all the basic vowels. Finally, we plotted the figures to show each basic vowel's distribution in physiological space of articulation.Started from the tongue shape data that is extracted by EdgeTrak, we developed a whole procedure of data processing, statistics, analysis and graph plotting in R environment in this dissertation and released the procedure's S code. And this preliminary procedure and its codes, as we believed, could provide a possible method for large sample analysis of tongue movement data in the future.The results of this dissertation confirmed the huge potential of applying ultrasound imaging technology in the field of Articulatory Phonetics, approved the probability of Articulatory Phonology for parsing articulating cases, and validated the universality and portability of Sound Pattern Theory.