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Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters
Linguistic systems are hypothesised to be shaped by pressures towards communicative efficiency that drive processes of simplification. A longstanding illustration of this idea is the claim that Chinese characters have progressively simplified over time. Here we test this claim by analyzing a dataset...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MIT Press
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9987343/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36891037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00064 |
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author | Han, Simon J. Kelly, Piers Winters, James Kemp, Charles |
author_facet | Han, Simon J. Kelly, Piers Winters, James Kemp, Charles |
author_sort | Han, Simon J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Linguistic systems are hypothesised to be shaped by pressures towards communicative efficiency that drive processes of simplification. A longstanding illustration of this idea is the claim that Chinese characters have progressively simplified over time. Here we test this claim by analyzing a dataset with more than half a million images of Chinese characters spanning more than 3,000 years of recorded history. We find no consistent evidence of simplification through time, and contrary to popular belief we find that modern Chinese characters are higher in visual complexity than their earliest known counterparts. One plausible explanation for our findings is that simplicity trades off with distinctiveness, and that characters have become less simple because of pressures towards distinctiveness. Our findings are therefore compatible with functional accounts of language but highlight the diverse and sometimes counterintuitive ways in which linguistic systems are shaped by pressures for communicative efficiency. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9987343 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MIT Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99873432023-03-07 Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters Han, Simon J. Kelly, Piers Winters, James Kemp, Charles Open Mind (Camb) Research Article Linguistic systems are hypothesised to be shaped by pressures towards communicative efficiency that drive processes of simplification. A longstanding illustration of this idea is the claim that Chinese characters have progressively simplified over time. Here we test this claim by analyzing a dataset with more than half a million images of Chinese characters spanning more than 3,000 years of recorded history. We find no consistent evidence of simplification through time, and contrary to popular belief we find that modern Chinese characters are higher in visual complexity than their earliest known counterparts. One plausible explanation for our findings is that simplicity trades off with distinctiveness, and that characters have become less simple because of pressures towards distinctiveness. Our findings are therefore compatible with functional accounts of language but highlight the diverse and sometimes counterintuitive ways in which linguistic systems are shaped by pressures for communicative efficiency. MIT Press 2022-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9987343/ /pubmed/36891037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00064 Text en © 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Han, Simon J. Kelly, Piers Winters, James Kemp, Charles Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters |
title | Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters |
title_full | Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters |
title_fullStr | Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters |
title_full_unstemmed | Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters |
title_short | Simplification Is Not Dominant in the Evolution of Chinese Characters |
title_sort | simplification is not dominant in the evolution of chinese characters |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9987343/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36891037 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00064 |
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