Walter R. Naito
Haskins Labs., 270 Crown St., New Haven, CT 06511
The tongue shapes of American and bilingual Japanese subjects were evaluated when producing words that include /r/ and /l/'s in English. An electromagnetic midsagittal articulometer (EMMA) system was utilized to observe and record the tongue shape. A total of six transducer coils was put on the tongue. Four were on the superior side of the tongue, and two were on the inferior side. The tongue shapes of the American subjects when producing /r/'s generally agreed with the earlier studies done by Delatree and Freeman [Linguistics 44, 28--68 (1968)]. On the other hand, the Japanese subjects had more uniform tongue shapes across subjects, which was thought to correlate with the Japanese /r/'s. [Work supported by NIH.]