ON THE STATUS AND MODIFICATIONS OF THE INTERNAL SYLLABLE STRUCTURE IN SYLLABIC LANGUAGES (BASED ON MANDARIN CHINESE)

The current paper touches upon two points of view on syllable nature in syllabic languages that are widely observed in literature. According to the first one, the syllable can be described as a grouping of smaller elements using the terms "phoneme," "allophone", "vowel", "consonant" that apply to non-syllabic languages. The second one is to regard the syllable as a minimal paradigmatic unit, similar to the phoneme in the non-syllabic languages. The obtained results enable to assume that such syllable constituents variation in Chinese spontaneous speech that might be a reflection of a common tendency in the Chinese speech flow.