本研究以語詞唸名作業合併音節遮蔽促發程序來探討音節在中國語言產製中的角色。實驗中，促發字與雙音節目標詞的詞首有數個音素相同。相同的部分構成一個音節或不構成一個音節。目標詞有兩種:CV-GV詞(如「霸業」)和CVG-CVX詞(如「敗類」)。促發字也有兩種:CV字(如「色」和CVG字(如「百」)。當促發字和目標詞共同的部分構成一個音節時，在實驗一裡，兩者的聲調與字形也都相同，也就是說，促發字即目標詞的第一個字;在實驗二裡，兩者的聲調相同，但字不同;在實驗三裡，兩者的聲詞與字均不同。三個實驗的結果皆出現促發種類與目標種類的交叉式交互作用。亦即，CV詞的唸名速度在CV字為促發項時比在CVG字為促發項時快，而CVG詞則相反。這樣的結果清楚地表明音節(不含聲詞)在中國語的言語產製系統中是一個被儲存及被規劃的音韻單位。這個結論與先前採用隱性促發作業所得到的結論一致。

The syllable’s role in Chinese (mandarin) speech production was investigated using masked syllable priming combined with a word naming task.. In three experiments, the prime (shown in the from of a Chinese character but masked)shared the first few segments with the beginning of the disyllabic target word. The segmental overlap either corresponded to a syllable or it did not. Aside form a neutral prime, there were two type of related primes: a CV (e.g., ba3) or a CVG (e.g., bay3) syllable, and two types of targets: a CV-GV (e.g., ba4-ye4) or CVG-CVX (e.g., bay4-ley4) word, where numbers stand for tones. In Experiment 1, when the prime-target overlap corresponded to a syllable, the tones and the orthographies were also the same (i.e., the overlap in effect corresponded to the entire character). In Experiment 2, the syllable overlap included the tone but not theorthography. In Experiment 3, the syllable overlap was restricted to the syllable only, the tone and the orthography being different. A crossover interaction of the prime by target type was observed not only in Exp. 1 but also in Exp. 2 and Exp. 3, the effect being larger in Exp. 1 and about the same in Exps. 2and 3. The crossover interaction effects from the last two experiments support the view that the syllable (lacking the tone) is a stored phonological chunk and plays an independent role as a planning unit in Chinese word production.