There are more native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages than of any other language family in the world. Records of these languages are among the oldest for any human language, and the amount of active research on them, both diachronic and synchronic, has multiplied in the last few decades. This volume includes overview articles as well as descriptions of individual languages and comments on the subgroups in which they occur. In addition to a number of modern languages, there are descriptions of several ancient languages.

There are more native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages than of any other language family in the world. Records of these languages are among the oldest for any human language, and the amount of active research on them, both diachronic and synchronic, has multiplied in the last few decades. This volume includes overview articles as well as descriptions of individual languages and comments on the subgroups in which they occur. In addition to a number of modern languages, there are descriptions of several ancient languages.

"The book uncovers the role The Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects plays in analyzing the spectrum of linguistic differentiation in China. The author starts by sketching the development and current state of Chinese dialectology and dialectal research. She then provides an analysis of the Dictionary and of the kind of information it provides. Looking at Chinese dialectology from a Western point of view, the author aims to understand and present the Chinese perspective"--Provided by publisher.

This comprehensive study of the phonetic properties of the sounds of Chinese dialects is based on instrumental data on the articulatory, acoustic, and physiological properties of these sounds. It covers a range of topics, including the sound categories of plosives, fricatives, affricates, nasals, approximants, vowels, diphthongs, triphthongs, and tones. The dialects covered are the representative members of the Chinese dialect groups, namely Guanhua (or Northern Chinese), Xiang, Gan, Wu, Min, Kejia (Hakka), and Yue. While many sounds are also found in other languages, there are those which are unique to Chinese dialects or rarely occur in other languages. In some instances, Chinese dialect sounds and those of other languages may share the same IPA transcription but differ in articulatory and acoustic characteristics. Teachers, researchers, and students of linguistics, language studies, speech pathology, and speech science are expected to find this book informative and useful. .

In part I of this volume, experts on various language areas provide surveys of word stress/accent systems of as many languages in 'their' part of the world as they could lay their hands on. No preconditions (theoretical or otherwise) were set, but the authors were encouraged to use the StressTyp data in their chapters. Australian Languages (Rob Goedemans), Austronesian Languages (Ellen van Zanten, Ruben Stoel and Bert Remijsen), Papuan Languages (Ellen van Zanten and Philomena Dol), North American Languages (Keren Rice), South American Languages (Sergio Meira and Leo Wetzels), African Languages (Laura Downing), European Languages (Harry van der Hulst), Asian Languages (Harry van der Hulst and René Schiering), Middle Eastern Languages (Harry van der Hulst and Sam Hellmuth). There is an introductory chapter (Chapter 1) that will provide the reader with elementary terminology and theoretical tools to understand the variety of accentual systems that will be discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Chapter 2 has a double function. It presents an overview of stress patterns in Australian languages, but at the same time it is intended to (re-)familiarize readers with the coding, terminology and theoretical ideas of the StressTyp database. Chapter 11 presents statistical and typological information from the StressTyp database. Part II of this volume contains 'language profiles' which are, for each of the 511 languages contained in StressTyp (in 2009), extracts from the information that is contained in the database. This volume will be of interest to people in the field of theoretical phonology and language typology. It will function as a reference work for these groups of researchers, but also, more generally, for people working on syntax and other fields of linguistics, who might wish to know certain basic facts about the distribution of word accent systems

This book mainly focuses on the close relationship between Chinese dialects and Chinese culture. It reveals,on the one hand, a long, rich and splendid Chinese culture from the perspective of Chinese dialects; on the other hand, it unveils the evolution, the development of Chinese dialects as well as their diversity and charm at the cultural angle. By combining the study of Chinese dialects with that of the history of Chinese culture, the author attempts to explore the cultural background of Chinese dialects’ formation and evolution,and at the same time, the author attempts to view Chinese dialects as the key access to find solutions to related questions appeared in the history of Chinese culture. Thus, it not only opens a new research scope for the Chinese dialectology, but it also finds a new path for the study of cultural history. The book is the first of its kind to create the concept of cultural linguistics, which leads to a new era of combined research on both language and culture.