On the modeling of homophony syllabary in Chinese dialects

Nankai Wu, Xingquan Hou and Jiangping Kong

Abstract: Phonetic comparison of Chinese dialects has been an important issue of academic interest. There are still some prominent problems with various existing metric comparison methods, such as randomness of phonemic processing and insufficient sampling of cognates or core words. Therefore, this paper proposes a new method using homophonic syllabary as the modeling object. Compared to existing methods, the present method has more advantages in terms of materials and methods. On the one hand, compared with phonological systems, syllabic lists or limited number of selected words, homophonic syllabaries are more representative linguistic materials and have been highly valued in Chinese dialectology. On the other hand, the present method focuses mainly on the homophonic relationship based on the unit of syllable, thus avoiding the difficulties of phonemic processing. Most importantly, this method is not simply a comparison of dialects by a certain parameter through a certain measurement method but rather a systematic modeling of the traditional historical phonological-dialectological method. While the method still needs to be further developed, it is promising as a combined quantitative and qualitative research paradigm.