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A Chinese phonological enigma
- Journal of Chinese Linguistics
- The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
- Volume 43, Number 2, June 2015
- pp. 679-691
- 10.1353/jcl.2015.0014
- Article
- Additional Information
Recent cross-language research has yielded strong statistical evidence in support of the idea, advocated by André Martinet and widely accepted by linguists, that languages avoid adopting sound-changes which would create many homophones. Yet we know that the history of Chinese phonology has been marked by repeated phoneme mergers and losses which led to a very high incidence of homophony, forcing the monomorphemic vocabulary of the classical language to be replaced by a largely bimorphemic modern vocabulary. This paper examines various ways in which this apparent contradiction might be resolved. None seems fully satisfactory, yet some resolution must exist.