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

 640  Hana Třísková   position is unoccupied, and “ n ” is in the fourth position), and of the Pīnyīn orthography (“ i ” in kui is in the fourth position, as / e / is omitted). Furthermore, although the image of a syllable is linear in the script, we have already pointed out that each particular segment is entangled within a net of hierarchical relationships amongst units of several different levels. These relationships determine the closeness of the connection between the neighboring segments (e. g. in kuan , the relationship between “ a” and the following “ n ” is tighter than that between “ a ” and the preceding “ u ”, as the relationship between a main vowel and a terminal is, as a rule, tighter than the relationship between a medial and a main vowel; this setting results in assimilations within a subfinal, while the assimilations between a medial and a main vowel basically do not occur). Naturally, standard script cannot reflect such features. It follows that students must not expect that Pīnyīn notation as such provides sufficient guidelines for pronouncing the Mandarin syllables correctly. Learning the Pīnyīn notation of syllables is just the first step, which has to be followed by a diligent training of the correct phonetic shapes of syllables. Certain metho- dological instruments can be found which may facilitate the students’ task. These instruments are, in our opinion, a preliminary explanation of the syl- lable structure and the employment of the traditional concepts of an initial, ( sh ngm ), a medial ( yùntóu ), a main vowel ( yùnfù ), and a terminal ( yùnw i ). The options for phonological interpretation of the syllable components While attempting to record the sound forms of languages in ancient times, Western culture arrived at analyzing speech into segments; the Westerners developed the notions of vowels and consonants (old Indian phonology had been familiar with them long before this time). These notions are reflected in various types of phonetic script of an alphabetic kind (such as the Latin script, or Cyrillic script). Vowels and consonants form an inherent part of theWestern phonological analysis; they appear as the basic phonological components, the vocalic and consonantal subsystems together establishing a segmental inven- tory of a language. A standard analysis of the sound systems of languages such as English, French, Czech etc. starts from their segmental inventory. Pīnyīn accepts the Western analytical approach to the sounds of speech: it works with the vowel and consonant phonemes, using the letters of the Latin alphabet. The “ Pīnyīn ” inventory of Mandarin segments can be posited in the following way: