ISCA Archive issp 2024
ISCA Archive issp 2024

Relating frication to articulation in Standard Mandarin apical vowels

Sean Foley, Bowei Shao, Matthew Faytak

Sibilants are characterized by the production of turbulent air- flow, which involves both a narrow constriction in the vocal tract and a certain volume velocity of the airflow. Despite both conditions being necessary for sibilant production, studies of constriction degree predominate in the literature. Using acous- tic and articulatory data, we show that in certain sequences Standard Mandarin apical vowels exhibit minimal lingual ad- justment compared to adjacent sibilants, while also exhibiting a considerable drop in frication noise. The same result was found for the vowel /i/. We hypothesize that the change in frication noise could be due to a number of different non-lingual factors and discuss the potential implications for models of sibilants.