These effects of coronals on vowels will be analyzed as involving
simple assimilation to the tongue body position of the coronal - coronals
that condition fronting are produced with a fronted tongue body, while
coronals which condition backing of vowels are produced with a more retracted
tongue body. Tongue body position is influenced by the position of the tongue
tip and blade because these articulators are physically connected, so for
each type of coronal there are preferred tongue body positions that
minimize the effort of producing the coronal constriction. However these
preferences may be over-ruled by other considerations,
e.g. realization of contrastive secondary articulations. We will see
that the proposed constraints on tongue body position during coronals
account for a variety of interactions between vowels and coronals.
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