复合音和“无序原则”

Complex Sound and the No Contour Principle

特征理论是人类语言编码的一个重要成分。绝大多数元音、辅音都遵循"无序原则"(Duanmu 1994),即在一个音的时段里,每个发音器官不能做两个或更多"有序"动作(如[-圆,+圆]、[-后,+后])。复合音泛指一些常见例外,如塞擦音、双元音、鼻冠音、啧音、内爆音、喷音等,每个音似乎需要两个或更多的有序动作。文章系统分析各种疑难的复合音,证明其中有的不是单音,而是两个音的有序组合。其他的复合音经过重新分析,全部符合"无序原则"。文章解决了一些长期疑难,使得特征理论更加简单。

Feature theory studies an important aspect of the coding system of human language. Most conso-nants and vowels obey the No Contour Principle （Duanmu 1994） , according to which, within a sound segment, no articulator can perform two or more sequential gestures （ such as [ -round, ＋round ] or [ -back, ＋back ]）. Apparent exceptions are loosely referred to as “complex sounds冶,such as affricates, diphthongs, pre-nasalized stops, clicks, implosives, and ejectives, which seem to require two or more sequential gestures. This paper of-fers a systematic analysis of various complex sounds. It shows that some of the complex sounds are not single sounds but clusters of two sounds, whereas other complex sounds can be represented as single sounds, all of which observe the No Contour Principle. The study offers answers to the analysis of some problematic complex sounds and yields a simpler version of feature theory.