摘要
中外學者論述國語音系的著作，數量上相當眾多，但直到現在還有一些重要的問題沒有得到合理的與適當的解決。本文作者認為，這是由於國音的基本性質還沒有得到澈底的與充分的分析。本文的目的就是要從純學理的觀點上，跟對這個題目有理論性的興趣的學者，詳細討論國音韻母的音位結構。作者的根本看法是：真正的音位分析必須能夠正確地反映（也就是合理的解釋）說某種語言的人群對語音的共同感受，特別是押韻的現象。作者認為，這個看法跟中國傳統音韻學的基本精神是完全相符的。根據這個看法，本文重新肯定了國音中只有高中低三個元音的說法，但跟前人不同的是：本文作者發現，在有韻尾的韻母裡，元音的對比是高元音對低元音，而不是中元音對低元音。在這個基礎上，漫無頭緒的兒化現象終於得到了合理而簡明的解說。
This article is aimed at a special audience, namely, the scholars who are already very familiar with the details of Pekingese phonetics but are nevertheless still keenly interested in its theoretical interpretation. The purpose of this study is to present, through examining some previous studies on Pekingese phonology, a new analytical interpretation of the phonemic structure of the Pekingese syllable finals. In this process, it tries to demonstrate that classical studies on this subject, such as Hartman 1944 and Hockett 1947, are either descriptively inadequate or theoretically unsound, or both. The basic premise of this study is its author's conviction that the truly phonemic study of a language must always be an accurate reflexion of, or a logical explanation for, the feeling of its native speakers, in particular, their habit of rhyming. It concludes that Pekingese has indeed three vowel phonemes, but proposes a new theory to account for their distribution. On this basis, a very simple and logical specification of the morphophonemic process of r-suffixation in Pekingese phonology is presented.