Tongue parts

[Rebecka N]

The slides mention the tongue parts tip, blade, body, and root. A further three are mentioned in Phonetics: a practical introduction (front, mid, back). Is it the case that the former set is the main definition – enough for descriptions of most sounds – and only in some very specific cases do we need the additional three terms to describe which part of the tongue is involved in the creation of a sound?

[Rebekka Puderbaugh]

I admit that I’m not an articulatory phonetician, and there seems to be quite a bit of variety when it comes to describing the parts of the tongue. The division of the tongue into parts is arbitrary and conventional and the choice of terminology seems to depend on your reasons for referring to the various parts. My sense is that “front, mid, back” refer to the body of the tongue, which is considered to be located behind the blade. In reality these articulatory parameters are continuous rather than discrete, so classifying a particular sound as involving a particular part of the tongue is not necessarily all that straightforward.

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