吴宗济先生的学术思想与理论体系

Academic idea and theoretic system of Professor Wu Zongji

著名语音学家、中国实验语音学的奠基人、已逾百岁的吴宗济先生,对中国语言学、特别是现代语音学的发展做出了杰出的贡献。吴先生的学术思想主要体现在以下几个方面:(一)在国内首次系统地采用声学和生理测量的方法,通过对汉语普通话元音、辅音及声调的系统实验分析,揭示了汉语元音、辅音和声调的客观生理和声学特性,推动了实验语音学在中国的发展;(二)首开中国协同发音研究的先河,通过对普通话不送气塞音和擦音音节内部及音节之间辅-元、元-辅音之间的协同发音考察,归纳出相关的声学模式,从发音生理上解释了汉语语音顺向或逆向的同化现象。同时,还运用协同发音原理解释汉语的连读变调现象;(三)采用乐律上的"半音"作为研究和处理字调与句调的度量单位,并提出了从赫兹标度换算为半音程标度的原理和方法;(四)继承和拓展了赵元任先生的语调思想,揭示了汉语语句中的必然变调规律和或然变调规律,在进一步阐述声调和语调关系的基础上,发现短语调群在不同语气语调中遵从"移调规则",解决了赵元任当年"暂时没有想出好法子"的难题,建立了从中性语调到感情语调的转换模型,并在此基础上为语音合成制定了相应的韵律标注系统和合成规则。(五)开创了汉语篇章韵律的探索,他以愤怒兼命令的感情句为例,对情感语调和篇章韵律的声学表现进行了考察;同时,还巧妙地吸收和融会贯通自然话语跟诗文、乐律及书法、绘画等艺术表达手段的某些共通性,进一步深入剖析了汉语篇章韵律的特点。

As the pioneer and founder of experimental phonetics in China,the famous phonetician,a venerable elder exceeded century year old,Wu Zongji has made distinguished contribution to Chinese linguistics,especially for the development of Chinese modern phonetics. The main academic idea of professor Wu can be summarized as follows:(1) For the first time in China,systematically discloses the objective characteristics of Chinese vowels,consonants and tones through acoustic and physiological analysis,thus,promotes the development of experimental phonetics in China. (2) Initiates the study on speech coarticulation in China,induces the acoustic patterns of coarticulation in Standard Chinese by exploring the corresponding phenomena taken place between consonant-vowel or vowel-consonant either of intra-and inter-syllables that initialed by unaspirated stops and fricatives,and interprets the phenomena of anticipatory and carryover assimilations from the view point of articulatory physiology; at the same time,applies coarticulatory principle to explain Chinese tone sandhi phenomena. (3) Creatively employs the 'semitone' ,a musical scale,as the measure scale of tone and intonation in the research and processing of Chinese speech,hereby interprets the principle and establishes a conversion formula from Hz scale to semitone scale. (4) Succeeds and extends the intonation theory of Professor Chao Yuan-Ren:A. Discovers the 'inevitable tone sandhi' rule and 'probable tone sandhi' rule in Chinese speech; B. Further expatiates the relationship between tone and intonation,and finds that tonal scale of phrasal group always obey the rule of 'change key' in different mood and intonation; C. Successfully solves the difficult problem left by Chao Yuan-Ren,and establishes a transform model from neutral intonation into emotive intonation consequently; D. Founds a labeling system and synthesis formula of speech prosody for Chinese speech processing based on above ideas. (5) Originates and promotes the exploration on discourse prosody by analyzing the acoustic realization of emotive sentences both in angry and jussive speech; at the same time,in order to further illuminate the characteristics of Chinese discourse prosody,some mutual features or similarities in the means of artistic expression existed between natural speech and verse,music,handwriting and painting were absorbed and digested skillfully.