Typological Universals Of Obstruents In Austroasiatic Languages In China

Phonological typology aims to discover typology and universals in human speech.At present,researchers have made certain achievements in studying Austroasiatic languages in China,but they have not yet studied these languages from the perspective of phonological typology.The author exhaustively selects 21 phonological points from 12 languages of 4language branches in Austroasiatic languages in China,and constructs a phonological database based on the data from published works.The typological universals of obstruents are analyzed from places of articulation and phonation types.In addition,the present study also explores the correlations among consonant size,syllabic structure and tonal system.Then the findings of the study are compared with those in the previous studies of Maddieson et al.to verify and supplement the existing conclusions.The findings are as follows:(1)Typological universals: In terms of number of obstruents,languages with ten plosives are the most common;Languages with six fricatives are the most common;Languages with two and four affricates are the most common.In terms of places of articulation,for plosives,the most common places of articulation are bilabial,alveolar,velar plus glottal places,and these four series are the most common;For fricatives,the most common places of articulation are labiodental,glottal and alveolar places;The most common series are five series;For affricates,the most common place of articulation is the alveolar-palatal place,and this one series is the most common.In terms of phonation types of obstruents,the most common phonation type is the unaspirated voiceless pattern;The most common pattern of phonation types are three series,including unaspirated voiceless,aspirated voiceless and unaspirated voiced.(2)Implicational universals: For obstruents,generally,the presence of voiced sounds implies the presence of voiceless ones.In addition,the special implicational universal for plosives is that the presence of /ɡ/ implies the presence of /b d/;For fricatives,the presence of voiceless /x/ implies the presence of voiced /(?)/.(3)Correlations among phonological properties: There are no correlations among consonant inventory size,syllabic structure and tonal system.(4)Verification and supplement of previous conclusions: There are twenty-six conclusions for obstruents typology in Austroasiatic languages in China,among which ten conclusions do not conform to those in previous studies,including four conclusions about plosives,three about the correlations among phonological properties,two about affricates and one about fricatives.The study on the phonology of Austroasiatic languages from the perspective of phonological typology not only enriches the conclusions of the phonological typology of world languages but also provides implications for the transcription and protection of minority languages.