The eminent sinologist Bernhard Karlgren (1918) observed an unusual property of Chinese: Many Chinese words seem quite redundant, such as kan-jian ‘(look)-see’, xie-zi ‘write-(words)’, hui-dao ‘return-(reach)’, and yan-lei ‘(eye)-tear’. The reason, he suggests, is that Chinese has too few syllables and too many homophones, and disyllabic words can avoid ambiguity. This view is accepted widely, both East and West, but with little evidence. This lecture will show that, despite its plausibility, the orthodox is wrong.

San Duanmu is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD in Linguistics from MIT in 1990 and has held teaching posts at Fudan University, Shanghai (1981-1986) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991-present). His research focuses on general properties of language, especially those in phonology. He is the author of The phonology of Standard Chinese (2nd edition, Oxford 2007) and Syllable structure: the limits of variation (Oxford 2008).