查看文章

In Taiwan Mandarin, retroflex [ʂ] is allegedly merging with dental [s], reducing the traditional three-way contrast between sibilant fricatives (i.e., dental [s]–retroflex [ʂ]–alveopalatal [ɕ]) to a two-way contrast. Most of the literature on the observed merging focuses on the acoustic properties and perceptual identification of the sibilants, whereas much less attention has been drawn to the articulatory evidence accounting for the aforementioned sibilant merging. The current study employed ultrasound imaging techniques to uncover the tongue postures for the three sibilant fricatives [s, ʂ, ɕ] in Taiwan Mandarin occurring before vowels [a], [ɨ], and [o]. Results revealed varying classes of the [s–ʂ] merger: complete merging (overlap), no merging (non-overlap), and context-dependent merging (context-dependent overlap, which only occurred before [a]). The observed [s–ʂ] merger was also confirmed by the perceptual …