A highly improbable data point

Abby Kaplan

Abstract 摘要
Several recent papers (Silverman 2010; Kaplan 2011; Wedel et al. 2013a,b) have presented evidence in favor of the longstanding functional load hypothesis (Martinet 1952; Hockett 1967), arguing that phoneme pairs that distinguish many words are unlikely to undergo merger, and that this phenomenon can be detected in sufficiently large datasets. In contrast with some other approaches (e.g., King 1967), these recent studies assume that functional load operates as a statistical tendency: homophony avoidance is one factor among many that influences the course of sound change, and does not by itself predict whether a given pair of sounds will merge or not. Geoffrey Sampson observes that many of the sound changes that have occurred in the history of Chinese involve merger, and that the result of these mergers is homophony on a massive scale. He notes that homophone creation of this magnitude is unexpected if there is indeed a tendency for pairs of sounds with high functional load to avoid merger.