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

 639  The Structure of the Mandarin Syllable: why, when and how to teach it   a linear sequence of vowels and consonants, arranged according to certain phonotactic rules. For instance: / kuan / = ○–●–●–○, / kuai / = ○–●–●–● A “beads-on-a-string” image of the Mandarin syllable, although provi- ding far more phonetic information than a Chinese character ( ku n vs. 宽 , kuài vs. 快 ), is of course only a very rough image of how a syllable actu- ally sounds. Pīnyīn notation captures in a more or less accurate way the phonemes constituting a syllable, not their particular allophones (the same applies in principle to any Latin orthography). The allophones must be “de- ciphered” by the reader (of course, they can be written down in the IPA if necessary). The realizations of phonemes in connected speech are influenced by a large number of linguistic factors operating at various levels of the language (not to mention the paralinguistic factors). The examples include: the neigh- boring segments, the position of a word within an utterance, stress, speech tempo, style etc. In this article we are concerned, in particular, with the fol- lowing factor: the function of a segment within a syllable , decided by its position within a syllable template. We have observed that there are four phonemes allowed in more than one position: / i / , / u / , / / , and / n / , and that the realization of these phonemes varies according to their position within a syllable. Yet beginners tend to ignore these variations, sticking to the pro- nunciation suggested by a Pīnyīn letter. For instance, they vaguely assume the letter “i” (e. g. in mi, mie, mai ) should be always pronounced in the same way — namely as [i] . In fact the phoneme / i / , written as a letter “ i ” , is realized variously as [i] / [ː]/[ ɿː ]/[ ʅː ] (if functioning as a main vowel), or as [j] (if functioning as a medial), or as [ɪ] (if functioning as a terminal). Indiscriminate adherence to the [i] pronunciation may lead to the serious er- ror mentioned above: the emergence of one more syllabic peak (or even two more peaks). One can overhear mie pronounced as * [mi.je] , mai as * [ma. ji] , etc. Another mistake is pronouncing / n / in the terminal position with a meticulously performed closure and an audible release. Fortunately, the in- formation about the function of a segment (and thus about the proper choice of a particular allophone) is retrievable by the reader: it is encoded in the location of the letter within a linear sequence of items which constitute a Pīnyīn syllable (e. g. in kuan , “ k ” is in the first position, “ u ” in the second, “ a ” in the third, and “ n ” in the fourth). Yet to decode the information correctly a reader must have a preliminary knowledge of syllable structure (e. g. in kan , “ k ” is in the first position, “ a ” is actually in the third position, as the second