Constructing initial phonology in M andarin C hinese: Syllabic or subsyllabic? A masked priming investigation

Recent research has put forward the idea that C hinese speech production is governed by the syllable as the fundamental phonological unit. However, it may be that onset priming might be more difficult to obtain in M andarin C hinese. Therefore, in this study, the degree of overlap between prime and target was increased from C to CV (i.e., extending beyond the phoneme) as well as whether primes and targets had an overlapping structure ( CV vs. CVN ). Subsyllabic priming effects were found (i.e., onset + vowel overlap but not purely onset overlap), contrasting with the claim that the syllable is the compulsory building block in the initial construction of M andarin C hinese phonology.