Проблемы китайского и общего языкознания. К 90-летию С. Е. Яхонтова

 624  Hana Třísková   pronounced as [s w an] , not [swan] ; the lips are rounded already during the articulation of [s] , while there is no separate sound [w] [Duanmu 2002: 28]. This makes the situation different from the English word swan . There is one more argument going on among those authors who accept the Onset- Rime model : they may disagree about the affiliation of the terminal vowels /i/, /u/ (as in the syllables mai, kuai, hao = / hau /). Some authors place /i/, /u/ into the nucleus of a syllable. The nucleus then has two slots, while the coda remains empty. This is a case of falling diphthongs: the whole falling diphthong is placed within a nucleus (an analysis common in Western pho- nology). Such a solution disrupts the correspondence between the rhyme part of both models. Namely, it disrupts a general correspondence between the nucleus and yùnfù (the main vowel), and, by the same token, the cor- respondence between the coda and yùnw i (the terminal). The cases which witness a disruption of the correspondence are the finals containing falling diphthongs or triphthongs. Other authors prefer to put /i/, /u/ into the coda slot, viewing them as vocalic terminals (Figure 4). This is not in accord with the general “Western” notion of a coda (which is understood as a post- nuclear consonant ). Such a solution, however, is in accord with the Chinese view of the syllable. As we are concerned with teaching Mandarin pronunciation (rather than with various alternative phonological analyses of the Mandarin syllable), we are bound to adopt Pīnyīn , i. e. the Initial-Final model . Thus we do not need to concern ourselves with the Onset-Rime model in any more detail. The mention of it has had an important purpose, though: we wanted to show that the views of the structure of the Mandarin syllable are not unanimous, that alternative solutions exist and that the commonly accepted initial-final ap- proach reflected in Pīnyīn is not “God’s Truth”. Presentation of the Mandarin syllable in (text)books If we look at the various treatments of the p t nghuà sound system (be it of Chinese or Western provenance, be it a textbook or a monograph, be it at an elementary level or at an advanced level, be it a part of a general language textbook or of a publication specializing solely in Mandarin pronunciation), we discover that the majority of these treatments does not explain the struc- ture of the Mandarin syllable at the beginning of a text. After making a gen- eral introduction plus presenting the segmental inventory of p t nghuà (not always), the authors usually state that a syllable is composed of an initial, a final and a tone; they then proceed to a survey of particular initials, finals, tones and the drilling of particular syllables. A chapter “Syllable” usually