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

 645  The Structure of the Mandarin Syllable: why, when and how to teach it   • Discrepancies between the sound system of Mandarin and the sound system of the native language of the student. In this article we were concerned with one particular topic of a sound system: syllable struc- ture. We may conclude now that the differences in the phonological and phonetic structure of the syllable in both languages cause two major sorts of segmental errors (both of them concern a final): ‚ ‚ Neglecting the specific phonetic features of the components G, V, X. It is namely through neglecting the positional variants of the seg- ments / i /, / u /, / /, / n / . These variations concern a massive range of syllables — i. e. all syllables with the finals of the VV, VC, GV, GVV and GVC type (only the final type V with a non-high main vowel remains aside). This means that mistakes of this kind may occur in almost any Mandarin syllable. ‚ ‚ Neglecting the assimilations of non-high vowels (most importantly of a low vowel / a / ) to the following back terminals / u /, / ng / . The errors occur in the syllables containing VX (namely the syllables with the finals of the VV, VC, GVV and GVC type) which have a back terminal. This sort of errors is probably less serious than the previous sort, consequently it is commonly ignored by language teachers. We shall call the mistakes described in the last two paragraphs “structural errors”. The mispronunciation of a terminal / ng / will be included here as well, since it is also a structural error in a certain sense. The examples of structural errors Let us review the major cases of structural errors and provide a few ex- amples: • In the finals comprising the rising diphthongs / ia /, / ie / , the medial / i / may be mispronounced as [i] (instead of correctly as [j] ); this often leads to the breaking up of a syllable into two syllables, as an extra syllabic peak emerges. An approximant [j] may be wrongly inserted before the second syllabic peak ( xia  * [ɕi.ja] , xie  * [ ɕi.je] ). The situation is analogous in the finals comprising triphthongs / iau / , / iou / ( xiu = / xiou /  * [ ɕi.joʊ] ). • In the finals comprising the rising diphthongs / ua /, / uo /, / e / , the me- dials / u /, / / may be mispronounced as [u] , [y] (instead of correctly as [w] , [ɥ]); this often leads to the breaking up of a syllable into two sylla- bles, as an extra syllabic peak emerges. An approximant [w] or [ɥ] may