Tongue Body Loops in Vowel Sequences

The tongue often shows some forward movement during the closure phase of velar consonants, resulting in elliptical trajectories (loops) in symmet- rical VCV utterances. Several hypotheses exist for the cause of these loops, but none can consistently explain all observations. This study demonstrates that loops also occur in V1-V2-V1 sequences with no consonants involved. It is shown that both the direction of the loops and the relative loop...