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

本研究旨在描述汉语和亚洲语言在同一地点的老年、中年和青年分化，并观察他们之间的语音变化。然后，在此实证基础上收集音变方向的真实的实例进行理论考察。在三年的时间里，我们对中国西南、东南亚、蒙古等地区的十多个地方进行了调查，获得了一系列反映在年龄分化上的历时变化的真实的实例。同时，我们收集了一些迄今为止发表的关于年龄分化的描述，虽然我们收集了许多描述性的数据，但我们发表的数量相当少。然而，有许多真实的音变过程是有经验依据的，与以往的推测不同，我们给出了揭示音变方向规律的依据，具有普遍性。例如，我们于2006年8月在中国西双版纳进行的汉语语音年龄分化调查结果如下：从老年到青年，在语音的发展过程中，尤其是声调的发展过程中，不仅在调值上，而且在发声类型上都发生了一系列的变化，如老年人的呼吸音变为中、青年人的喉音或喉塞音。

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.