Directions of sound changes as reflected in the age differentiation in the Chinese dialects and East Asian languages

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This research aims at to describe the differentiation of elder, middle and younger ages in the one and the same place of Chinese and Asian languages, and observe the sound changes among them. And then, we collect the real examples of the directions of sound change on this empirical basis for theoretical survey. There are plenty of languages which have tone among these languages, so that we can obtain many examples of diachronical change of tone value.In the period of 3 years, we have investigated over 10 places in the area of South-western China, Southeast Asia and Mongolia, obtained a series of real examples of diachronical change which reflected in the age differentiation. In the meantime, we have collected a number of the description on the age differentiation which had published hitherto.Though we have collected many descriptive data, but those which we have published are rather small number. However, there are a lot of real prosess of sound changes which have empirical foundation, as different from the speculations which had denoted formerly, we have given the basis to reveal the rules on directions of sound change which have universality.For example, the result of the investigation of the age differentiation of sounds of Chinese that we have done in Sipsongpanna, China at August 2006 is as follows: there are a series of big changes in progress, espetially of tone, from old age to young age, not only in tone values, but also in phonation type: e.g. the tone which is pronunced with breathy voice in the old generation is pronunce with creaky voice or glottal stop among middle and young generations.