浅析藏文末字母“■”的归属问题

An Analysis on the Letter“■”of Tibetan Alphabets

传统的藏文文法中,对“■”为元音或辅音的问题历来争论不休,这是因为“■”在形式上与梵文元音“■”对应,藏文文字系统中却又列在辅音字母表里,给“■”的判定和解释带来一定的困难和不确定性。文章区分了语音学意义上的“■”和文字学意义上的“■”。认为,在语音上,“■”没有实质的音位价值,与元音/a/是变体关系,从音位归纳的角度看,可将“■”视为一个元音;从人类发音器官的共性上看,以元音为首的音节在发音时,必须依附于一个喉塞音/?/,藏文文字系统正好用“■”字符代表辅音/?/,这就是文字学意义上的辅音“■”。藏文的元音/a/,是零形式表现。根据实验发现,只有核心辅音位置才可以拥有零形式的元音/a/,其余有其他元音标记、前加字、后加字、上加字、下加字位置不会附带元音/a/,这是古藏文设计的创新之处。

Whether“■”is included in vowels or consonants is a problem in Tibetan traditional grammar and therefore has always been controversial,mainly because of“■”in form and Sanskrit vowel“■/”,it is listed as consonants in Tibetan language system.This brings“■”to judge and explain certain difficulties and uncertainties.The article distinguishes between phonetics in the sense of“■”and“■”as a meaning of philology.On the voice,“■”without substantial phoneme value,with a vowel sound/a/variation relationship,from the perspective of phonological induction,it can be treated“■”as a vowel;From the point of view,the generality of human speech organs when headed by vowel syllable pronunciation,it must be attached to a glottal stop/?/,Tibetan writing system uses“■”characters to represent consonants/?/,this is the philology in the sense of consonants“■”.The vowel/a/in Tibetan is expressed in the form of zero.According to the experiment,only the core consonant position can have the zero form of vowel/a/,and the rest have other vowel marks,prefix,postscript,superscript and subscript positions without the vowel/a/,which is also the innovation of ancient Tibetan design.