ABSTRACT
Common typological features may prove the kinship of languages, but they may also have only areal character. The study of Modern Chinese languages shows clearly that word-order changes may also be caused by the influence of a substratum and this is evidently completely independent of the kinship of languages. The chapter suggests that even in the future Chinese linguists will accept the kinship theory, because generally speaking Chinese linguists are methodologically behind Western linguists. Besides, many early loan words are apparently common words that must be interpreted in the terms of areal theory. Most of these languages belong to Tibetan, Burman, Chinese, and Tai groups, but there are among them also languages that do not belong to the mentioned groups, such as Vietnamese. The distinctive function of intonation is known in many languages, but it occurs mostly in spoken language, while appearing less often in written.
