Knowledge Bank

The Chinese syllable traditionally consists of an initial and a final. If no overt consonant occupies the syllable-initial position, a zero initial (Ø) is placed there. This slot is often not empty, however, but contains a multitude of phonetic variants depending on such factors as (sub)dialectal differences and the phonetic properties of the following vowel. This small, preliminary study, making use of simple, visual inspection of waveforms and spectrograms in Praat, contributes to issues of facilitation and interference in D2 and L2 acquisition. The focus is on the zero initial before high vowels in the following three settings: within the Yue dialects (Zhongshan, standard Cantonese), across varieties of Chinese (Mandarin, Yue), and across languages (Chinese, English).