On the nature of apical vowel in Jixi-Hui Chinese: Acoustic and articulatory data

Chinese languages have a set of segments known as apical vowels, which been analysed in previous studies either genuine fricative consonants, or approximants. This study is concerned with the vowel attested Jixi-Hui Chinese. We examine this segment from acoustic and articulatory perspectives argue that it best defined /z/. Phonologically, /z/ distinct phoneme exclusively syllable nucleus position where constitutes tone-bearing unit can undergo tonal sandhi processes. It appear not only after coronal sibilants /s ts ts?/, but also bilabials /p p?/ nasals /m n/. Acoustically, we show contains frication noise its initial phase majority cases, formant structure towards end. The analysis zero-crossing rate confirms significant presence noise, clearly distinguishing vowels. Furthermore, analyses ultrasound data has near-identical tongue shape to /s/ on both mid-sagittal planes, sibilant non-sibilant contexts. These findings are viewed light variability way phonetically implemented