Review of Button, Phonetic Ambiguity in the Chinese Script

& (verbiage overflow)Sun 26 July 2015RSS

I have posted a long-delayed review, of Christopher Button’s Phonetic Ambiguity in the Chinese Script.

Button evaluates the hypothesis of “polyphony” — coexistence of more than one etymologically productive reading per graph, and particularly the “crypto-phonogram” aspect of the hypothesis: that early in history it was forgotten that many graphs had phonetically unrelated readings.

Although this idea has had many detractors, Button’s may be the first rigorous effort to undermine the theory.

On balance, I think the arguments fair. What Button is offering is not a rebuttal to the whole polyphonic hypothesis but a substantial counter-interpretation of the evidence, case by case.

I don’t consider the theory fully undermined, though — and urge a response from the Crypto-Phonogrammatic camp.

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