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

 614  Hana Třískov The Structure of the Mandarin Syllable: why, when and how to teach it 1 Introduction In this article, we shall be concerned with the isolated segmental syllable of Mandarin 2 , and will be leaving aside the suprasegmental component of tone. A traditional model of the Chinese syllable (see Figure 2) splits up a syllable into two basic subsyllabic components: an initial ( sh ngm 声母 , i. e. an initial consonant), and a final ( yùnm 韵母 , i. e. the rest of the syllab- le). This traditional analysis is not necessarily accepted by all phonologists (for an alternative solution, see Figure 4). However, in teaching Mandarin it has been employed more or less universally, since it was adopted as the ba- sis for the widely accepted Pīnyīn spelling system ( Pīnyīn is a major spell- ing tool used in current textbooks). Since we are concerned with methods of language teaching in this article, we shall follow this line and stick to Pīnyīn in all respects. It is used for the notation of syllables, initials, finals, or par- ticular sounds (it is always presented in italics). Pīnyīn symbols (not the IPA symbols) are also used for phonological representation . Why do we need phonological representation? The Pīnyīn system was not designed solely as a phonetic or phonological transcription tool. It was fashioned to serve 1 Originally published in: Třísková, Hana. The Structure of the Mandarin Syllable: Why, When and How to Teach it. Archiv Orientální, 2011 (79), No. 1, pp. 99–134. Minor corrections of the original version made. 2 The term “Mandarin” is — among other usages — commonly used as a label for modern Standard Chinese as codified in the P. R. C.; its meaning is then identical with p t nghuà .