Mandarin phonological structure

Abstract

This paper attempts to present the Mandarin phonological system after the generative fashion.1 We find it convenient to treat this part of the grammar in two components: namely, a syllable grammar and morphophonemics. The former attempts to designate the structure of the basic syllables independently of the syntactic component of the grammar. It consists of a set of P-rules to generate strings of phonemes for the basic syllables. The latter operates on sequences of these syllables with intrasyllabic information designated by the syllable grammar, and with category and intersyllabic information which can be given by the syntactic component. It consists of T-rules and gives a phonetic representation of sentences as its output.