Purpose The study was aimed at investigating what kind of lip positions are selected by Japanese adult participants for an unfamiliar Mandarin rounded vowel /y/ and if their lip positions are related to and/or differentiated from those for their native vowels. Method Videotaping and post hoc tracking measurements for lip positions, namely protrusion and vertical aperture, and acoustic analysis of vowel formants were conducted on participants' production in a repetition task. Results First, 31.2% of all productions of /y/ were produced with either protruded or compressed rounding. Second, the lip positions for /y/ were differentiated from those for the perceived nearest native vowel; although they correlated with them in terms of vertical aperture, they did not in terms of protrusion/retraction. Conclusions Lip positions for a novel rounded vowel seemed to be produced as a modification of existing lip positions from the native repertoire. Moreover, the degree of vertical aperture might be easily transferred, and the degree of protrusion is less likely to be retained in the new lip positions.

word-initially. Phonemically, the standard language only has 3 nasal vowels /ã ĩ ũ/. [ɛ̃] is only used in the word ìyẹn~yẹncode: yor promoted to code: Yoruba (US: , UK: ; Yor. Èdè Yorùbá [èdè jōɾùbá]) is an Atlantic–Congo language that is spoken in West Africa, primarily in South West Nigeria, Benin, and parts of Togo. It is spoken by the Yoruba people. Yoruba speakers number roughly 50 million, including around 2 million second-language or L2 speakers. As a pluricentric language, it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria, Beni In some cases, the phonetic realization of these vowels is noticeably different from what the symbol suggests: The oral /i/ is close front [i], and the nasal /ĩ/ varies between close front [ĩ] and near-close front [ĩ̞]. The oral /u/ is close back [u], and the nasal /ũ/ varies between close near-back [ũ̟], close back [ũ], near-close near-back [ũ̟˕] and near-close back [ũ̞]. The oral /e, o/ are close-mid [e, o], and do not have nasal counterparts. The oral /ɛ/ is open-mid [ɛ], and the nasal /ɛ̃/ varies between mid [ɛ̝̃] and open-mid [ɛ̃]. The oral /ɔ/ is near-open [ɔ̞], and the nasal /ɔ̃/ varies between open-mid [ɔ̃] and near-open [ɒ̃]. The oral /a/ is central [ä]. Nasal vowels are by default written as a vowel letter followed by ⟨n⟩, thus: ⟨in⟩, ⟨un⟩, ⟨ẹn⟩, ⟨ọn⟩, ⟨an⟩. These do not occur word-initially. Phonemically, the standard language only has 3 nasal vowels /ã ĩ ũ/. [ɛ̃] is only used in the word ìyẹn~yẹncode: yor promoted to code: yo [(ì.)jɛ̃] ‘thatʼ, an SEY word borrowed into the standard language which is slowly gaining traction over the traditional word, èniyìcode: yor promoted to code: yo /è.lĩ̄.jì/ [è.nĩ̄.jì]. [ɔ̃] is how /ã/ is pronounced after labial consonants, an allophony represented within the orthography (Compare ìbọncode: yor promoted to code: yo [ì.bɔ̃̄] ‘gun’, spelled with ⟨ọn⟩ and pronounced with a rounded [ɔ̃] vs. dáncode: yor promoted to code: yo [dã~dɔ̃] ‘to shineʼ, spelled with ⟨an⟩ and pronounced with an unrounded [ã]). Some speakers pronounce all instances of /ã/ as [ɔ̃], due to the lack of a meaningful phonemic difference between the two in the standard dialect. All vowels are nasalized after the consonant /m/, and thus there is no additional ⟨n⟩ in writing (micode: yor promoted to code: yo , mucode: yor promoted to code: yo , mọcode: yor promoted to code: yo ). In addition, the consonant /l/ has a nasal allophone [n] before a nasal vowel (see below), and this is reflected in writing: inúcode: yor promoted to code: yo ("inside, belly") (/īlṹ/ → [īnṹ]).

sounds of y. Vowels pronounced with rounded lips are enclosed in brackets. The more open the sound the less the rounding . The vowel sounds i, e, a , o, w, except