Biomechanical insights into intrinsic laryngeal control: a cross-linguistic study of Mandarin vowel production in native Mandarin speakers and South Korean learners

This study examines differences in intrinsic laryngeal muscle control during Mandarin vowel production between native Mandarin speakers and advanced South Korean learners. By analyzing vocal fold vibrations and muscle activation patterns, it provides a biomechanical perspective on second language phonetic challenges. Twenty native Mandarin speakers (control) and twenty advanced South Korean learners (experimental), all from the same university, participated in the study. Participants produced monosyllabic words while formant frequencies were recorded. A computational vocal fold-airway model simulated vowel production, focusing on the activation of the cricothyroid (CT), thyroarytenoid (TA), and lateral cricoarytenoid (LC) muscles. Simulated formant frequencies were compared with actual recordings to identify muscle control differences. Native speakers exhibited higher CT and TA activation for /a/ and /i/, while South Korean learners showed reduced activation of these muscles and increased reliance on the LC muscle. For /u/, the native speakers' model revealed lower overall muscle activation, whereas learners over-activated all three muscles. The findings reveal distinct laryngeal control patterns between native and non-native speakers, emphasizing the role of biomechanical modeling in second language phonetics research. By identifying specific muscle activation differences, this study provides insights into the physiological basis of vowel articulation challenges and lays the groundwork for future research on cross-linguistic phonetic and phonemic acquisition.