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

 634  Hana Třísková   ately leaves the position, making the medial sound very short. As a whole, the sound has the character of an approximant [j] (thus mie is pronounced as [mje] , etc.). Some authors even view a medial as a mere secondary articulation to an initial consonant: e. g. mie  [m j e] , not [mje] , suan  [s w an] , not [swan] [Duanmu 2002]. • / i / functioning as a terminal , i. e. as the second part of a falling diph- thong, such as / a i / (as in k i 开 “to open”). Its articulation was de- scribed above: it is rather lax, more or less centralized (it does not reach the articulatory target of [i] , nor it is pronounced as [j] ); it can even disappear. It is obvious that, according to its function within the final, the phoneme / i / may surface as several rather different sounds. The phonetic features of G, V, X — a summary We are now in a position to summarize the general phonetic features of G, V, X. We will leave aside the C component for the moment, since — if we neglect the possible influence of a following high vowel — the initial consonants basically have no positional variants, being allowed only in the onset of a syllable (the only exception is / n / allowed also in the coda); their phonetic features are those of a consonant occurring in an onset. In other words, we can focus our attention only on the components which constitute a final, that is G, V, X. Before we proceed further, let us posit six structural types of Mandarin finals : V (- a ), VV (- ai ), VC (- an ), GV (- ia ), GVV (- uai ), GVC (- uan ). The phonetic features of the medials (G), the main vowels (V), and the terminals (X) can be summed up as follows: • The medials / i /, / u /, / / have a tense articulation, reaching the articula- tory target of the high vowels [i] , [u] , [y] ; the tongue leaves the position immediately, making the sound very short, possibly with a little friction involved. As a whole, the medials have the character of the approxim- ants transcribed as [j] , [w] , [ɥ] respectively (note that the sounds called approximants are considered to be consonants, not vowels). Another option is to transcribe the medials as the “semivowels” [i̯], [u̯], [y̆] . We prefer the former solution, i. e. [j] , [w] , [ɥ]. For example, the syllable xie we transcribe as [ɕje] , not [ɕi̯e] . We believe that such a transcrip- tion may help students to avoid a common mistake: breaking a syllable containing a rising diphthong or a triphthong into two or even three syl- lables ( xie  * [ɕi.je] ). Note that regardless of the fact that the medials