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

 647  The Structure of the Mandarin Syllable: why, when and how to teach it   as ba, zha, po, mo, de, ge, account for less than 40 out of the approximately 400 segmental syllables). These errors indeed make up a good deal of the mispronunciations heard in the classroom, and — not infrequently — also in the speech of advanced speakers of Mandarin. Summary • The structure of the Mandarin syllable is fairly simple. This does not automatically imply, however, that it can be easily adopted by native speakers of other languages. Certain types of difficulty must be expected in learners whose native languages have a considerably different syllable structure. These are especially the languages where diphthongs and triphthongs are rare or completely absent (such as Czech). • There is a general consensus among phonologists that the Mandarin syllable is composed of four components C, G, V, X, defined by their position within a syllable template. They correspond to four traditional components: “an initial, a medial, a main vowel, a terminal”. Their vo- calic/consonantal phonemic status is not uniform, at least in the case of X (a terminal): phonemically, X may be either a nasal consonant, or a vowel. Yet, the nasal terminals are rather close to vowels phonetically: they belong to the class of sonorants, their consonantal features appear to have been eroded. • Phonologists further agree that the closest relationship is between V and X, unanimously accepting the component of a rime/rhyme/subfinal (cf. the syllable models presented in Figures 1 and 3). • Each of the components C, G, V, X displays certain phonetic properties shared by all segments allowed in the position in question. • There are two crucial types of errors related to syllable structure: first, neglecting the due phonetic features of the components C, G, V, X (in particular the positional variants of / i / , / u / , / / , / n / ), and sec- ond, neglecting the anticipatory assimilations within a subfinal. Both types of errors can (and frequently do) occur within the same syllable. They account for a massive proportion of pronunciation mistakes as a whole. • Some of the treatments of the p t nghuà sound system depart from the inventory of vowel phonemes and consonant phonemes. Yet, traditio- nally, the Chinese syllable has been rendered as a combination of an initial, a final and a tone. The finals are chiefly presented as strings of