An articulatory model of the tongue composed of linear components was determined by a statistical analysis of tongue shapes and jaw‐opening measured on lateral x‐ray motion pictures. The sum of the four components describes adequately the tongue shapes observed during utterances of 12 French vowels in sentences and of pV1CV2disyllables, where V1V2= [i,a,u] and C = [b,d,g]. These components represent the effect of the jaw articulator, of the tongue‐body articulator, of the dorsal articulator, and of the apical articulator upon the tongue shape, respectively. The vowels plotted on the articulatory space, where thexaxis corresponds to the tongue‐body component and the y axis to the jaw component, form the vowel triangle. The model seems to explain, at least in part, the origin of articulatory “front‐back” and “high‐low” dimensions. We speculate that such model should be suitable for the description of the dynamics of the tongue, since that of the individual articulators may be governed by a relatively simple law.