The Research Of The Phonetic Typology Of Tibeto-burman Group

The Tibeto-Burman group is the most wildly distributed and the most featured language group in Sino Tibetan Family.There are abundant research achievements about this language group after the establishment of PRC.However,study on the typology of phonetic system of Tibeto-Burman group is not sufficient.This thesis will study the phonological universals and typology of 48 languages based on the book The Languages in China and many other published reports of Tibeto-Burman languages,and examine universal principles of human languages,which are proposed by Ian Maddieson and other experts based on UPSID and WALS.The thesis will also try to explain some phonetic characters and typological features caused by historical evolution at the same time.There are six parts and 4 Chapters in this thesis.The introduction mainly summarizes the research status of phonetic typology and Tibeto-Burman Group,illustrates the research value,research method,source of materials and the explanation of j argon.Chapter 1 analyzes the consonant system of 48 sample languages,including plosives,fricatives,affricates,nasals and consonant clusters,and discuss the typological characteristics of Tibeto-Burman group,and we will also compare the parameters with the typological features which are proposed by Ian Maddieson et al.’s based on UPSID and WALS,thus we can discover the universals and characteristics of the consonant system of Tibeto-Burman group in the world.Chapter 2 investigates the vowel system of Tibeto-Burman,including vowels,various properties of vowel series,diphthongs,VN structure and VC structure.The structure,tongue position and geographical distribution of Tibeto-Burman group are systematically analyzed.It is found that the most common vowel system is a 9-vowel system,the existence of front rounded vowels connotate the existence of front unrounded vowels,the existence of back unrounded vowels connotate the existence of back rounded vowels in Tibeto-Burman group.Chapter 3 is a typological study on tones of Tibeto-Burman group,including the tone value and pattern of 48 languages.The most common tone is found to be flat,the relationship between tones and vowels,consonants,consonant codas are examined,it is found that there is an inverse relationship between the inventory of tones and consonant codas.Chapter 4 collects syllable structures of 48 languages.The statistics show that the most common syllable structure is the CV.The main syllable structure types can be divided into four categories.In addition,the relationship between syllable structures and the inventory of vowels,consonants,tones are also discussed.The complexity of the syllables remains in a balanced state.