Sound Systems of the Asia-Pacific: Some Basic Typological Observations
Author(s):
Hajek, John
Format:
Journal article
Citation:
Linguistische Berichte, Volume 2007, Issue special issue 14 (2007). pp. 207-222.
Language:
German
Abstract:
As a very large proportion of the approximately 2,400 languages of the Asia-Pacific region, including most or all of the languages of the Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai, & Hmong-Mien families & the variously classified languages of the New Guinea area, are endangered &/or still poorly described, a sense of the work still to be done by linguists is provided by a survey of typologically unusual features of segmental phonology found in the region. Attention is drawn to P. Sidwell & P. Jacq's description of Nyaheun (Mon-Khmer), with 27 vowel phonemes & 58 consonant phonemes, including a seven-way stop series distinguished by features of length, voicing, prenasalization, & preglottalization; the phonotactics of Taba & Leti (Austronesian), where large consonant cluster inventories contradict Joseph Greenberg's (1978) typological principles & are more frequent in word-initial position than intervocalically; & unusual segment types: linguolabial consonants & bilabial trills in certain languages of Vanuatu, the only known labial flap outside Africa in Sikka (Indonesia), & an extensive inventory of syllabic consonants in Liangshan Yi (Sino-Tibetan). References. J. Hitchcock