汉语指示词语音象似性的跨方言考察(上)

Studies in the phonetic iconicity of Chinese demonstratives across dialects

本文赞同指示词的语音形式和距离远近存在着关联的观点,提出了指示词语音象似性三原则:背景原则、响度原则和重度原则。这三条原则通过大量汉语方言数据的统计分析进行了验证。文章还指出,汉语中指示词元音开闭符合预测的原则但前后并不符合,这说明,把元音开闭和前后作为两个参项分别进行统计更合理,而试图将开闭和前后统一为F2(第二共振峰)这一个参项的观点在汉语中遇到了挑战。

This article,adopting the viewpoint that the phonetic forms of demonstratives are related to their distance meanings,proposes three principles of phonetic iconicity for demonstratives:(1)the Background Principle,(2)the Sonority Principle and(3)the Weightiness Principle.The three principles are attested by statistic analyses of rich dialectal data of Chinese.It is found that the closeness and openness of vowels in Chinese demonstratives are in accord with the Sonority Principle but the back and front are not.This result indicates that the treatment of the closeness and openness of vowels from the back and front as two separate parameters is preferable,and the operation to merge them into a single parameter F2 is challenged.