Abstract
This thesis investigates the coarticulation between CV and VC in terms of locus equation and provides articulatory descriptions of vowels in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). Previous studies on the locus equation focus on the CV, which illustrate the alveolar plosive onset has the lowest locus equation that suggests larger coarticulatory force on the following vowel. The same method applied to the VC in English and Persian do not show any coarticulatory effect on precedent vowel. However, the coda in TSM is unreleased top, which behaves differently from these languages. Therefore in this study, the locus equations of CV and VC are calculated, and the coarticulatory patterns of the two positions will be discussed. The results from this thesis suggest that the coda in TSM, although has weaker coarticulatory effect compared to the onset, still shows coarticulatory effect based on the observation that different places of articulation have different coarticulatory force on the precedent vowel. For the articulatory description on vowels, the result will be illustrated according to the backness and height of the three tongue gestures, tongue dorsum (TD), tongue blade (TB), and tongue tip (TT). The observations on vowel height indicate that the whole shape of the tongue should be considered while describing the vowel height.