Initial Consonants of China's Tibetan Branches:Types and their Development
The initial consonants of China's Tibetan branches are complex and diverse in terms of type,and their diachronic development is uneven,making them-selves good materials for research on the types of initial consonants and their development.The simple consonants are fairly common in the types of mod-ern Tibetan branches,many features of which deserve further study.The consonant clusters in modern Tibetan branches are featured with varying numbers,di verse types,and uneven combination and pairing.The diphthong consonants are relatively common while the triadic consonants are quite few,much fewer for quadruple consonants.The consonant clusters of Tibetan branches are moving towards simplification,the quadruple consonants repre-sent the early consonant types,followed by the triadic consonants and the diphthong consonants,and the simple consonants stand for the late conso-nant types.The quadruple consonants will exit from"the history stage".