论汉语元音音位

On the Chinese Vowel Phonemes

传统汉语音韵学研究认为韵母是不可分割的整体。随着普通语言学思想的深入,越来越多的研究关注汉语元音音段的格局。但有关汉语库藏元音音位一直没有统一认识。本文根据生成音系学关于音位的抽象性本质,以汉语实际语料为依据,梳理了长期以来有关汉语元音音位的众多不同观点;尤其运用激进不充分赋值理论,首次提供了底层中元音音位是央元音/■/的音系理据。本文从汉语表层14个元音音段推导出5个元音音位(/i y u ■ a/)及音位变体产生的音系规则。

The traditional Chinese phonology regards the final(yunmu)of the Chinese syllable unsegmentable so that there has been litle study on the Chinese vowel phonemes until about thirty years ago when the theories of general linguistics became more and more popular.Now there have been some more studies on the inventory of Chinese vowel segments.However,the ideas about the inventory of the underlying Chinese vowels are surprisingly controversial,varying in the number of vowel phonemes from ten to none,let alone the different individual vowels.Such great divergent opinions of the inventory of Chinese phonemic vowels result not only from the traditional obstinacy in the integrity of the final,but also from the limited understanding of the abstraction of phonemes.According to the nature of a phoneme which is understood as an abstract category in contemporary phonology,this article makes a scientific analysis of more than fourteen surface vowel segments in light of contemporary phonological theories.It believes that the two apical high vowels[■]and[■]are allophones of the underlying phonemic laminal high vowel/i/,the former only appearing after apical consonants in complementary distribution with the latter which can appear after more different initial consonants,and that only one underlying low vowel is/a/,with[a],[A],[α],[D],[ε]or[■]surfacing either in complementary distribution with each other or as free variants.The most controversial issue of the Chinese phonemic vowels is about mid vowels,surfacingas[e],[o],[ε],[■],[■]or[■].Due to the equal frequency of mid vowels being complementarily distributed on the surface,the proposed number of phonemic mid vowels range from four to one,sometimes without any reason given for their opinions.Generally speaking,if the variant segments are in equally frequent complementary distribution on the surface,the possible underlying structure can be either in an abstract form with no phonetic reality or the one which is the most unmarked.There are some attempts to treat underlying mid vowel as an underspecified abstract category with only[-high,-low]features and get fully specified with different features of[+/-back],[+/-round],[+/-tense]or[+/-rhotic],surfacingas[e],[o],[ε],[■],[■]or[■].But such attempts of treating the underlying mid vowel as an underspecified abstract form are far from convincing,with problems in full feature specification on the surface.Based on the theory of radical underspecification in which the unmarked value of features is unspecified underlyingly,this article finds that the mid central vowel is the most unmarked among the six after analyzing the feature specification of all the surface mid vowels and claims that the unmarked central vowel[■]represents the underlying mid vowel in Chinese,with other five mid vowels surfacing as its allophones.Through a systematic and well-knit analysis,the article arrives at five phonemic vowels in Chinese which are/i y u ■ a/.