[Motor activity of the point of the tongue in forming dento-alveolar consonants].

Electromagnetic articulography, a new tool for the study of articulatory movements, was used for the examination of apical tongue dorsum movements during the production of repeated VCV sequences. In our study of 16 normal German speakers, the trajectories of three apicolingual consonants, /t/, /s/ and /ss/, in an aCa sequence were assessed for inclination and length of the articulatory movement trajectories. A clear differentiation in length and direction of articulatory movements for the VCV utterances/ata/, /asa/ and /ass a/ was revealed. Variation in the direction of initial movement starting from the resting position was interpreted as effect of coarticulation.