Tongue root

The tongue root is the part at the far back and bottom of the tongue, forming the front wall of the pharynx. It can really only do a couple of interesting things:

• push forwards, thereby expanding the pharynx.
• pull backwards, thereby constricting the pharynx.

Remember that the tongue root is intimately connected to the tongue body -- so they affect each other. When the tongue root is doing something, this makes it easier for the tongue body to do certain things and harder for it to do others, and vice versa. (For example, it's hard for the tongue root to move backwards and the tongue body to move upwards at the same time -- they are essentially pulling in opposite directions.)

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