Mandible height and syllable-final tenseness

Mandible movements in the vowel-to-consonant transition manifest consistent differences between /t/ and /d/ in syllable final position. Both mandible position at its peak value near the articulatory release of the stop and velocity of its ascending movement in the transition are found to be apparently relevant to the tense/lax distinction, even though the reliability of these criteria for categorizing t/d data somewhat varies depending on the speaker. Some related characteristics of lingual movements and similar mandible characteristics for the k/g distinction are mentioned. The data were obtained by the computer-controlled X-ray microbeam system in cooperation with the University of Tokyo group.