漢、藏、緬語元音的比較研究

A Comparative Study of the Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese Vowel Systems

漢藏語的比較研究以漢、藏、緬語的歷史研究為基礎。本文將李方桂先生四個元音的漢語上古音系統與五個元音的古藏語元音系統及作者分析古緬甸語所得三個元音的系統加以比較，獲得的結論是：漢藏語和上古漢語一樣，具有四個元音。

The Sino-Tibetan family comprises hundreds of languages and dialects. Among them, the most important languages having long histories in written form are Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese. Chinese preserves literature of the first millenium B. C., and of the language in that time we already possess considerable reliable knowledge. For Tibetan there is an Inscription of A. D. 821-822, which was studied by Fang-kuei Li (1956). The earliest document for Burmese is the Myazedi inscription of A. D. 1112, studied by Nishida (1955, 1956). The purpose of this paper is to. compare the vowel systems of these three literary languages and to reconstruct the vowels of their parent language.