Homophony avoidance has often been claimed to be a mechanism of language change. We investigate this mechanism in Dutch by applying two strands of research – corpus studies and experimental data – to find support for claims based on earlier historical observations. Throughout the history of Dutch, homophony avoidance has been named as the cause of language change or inhibition of change on several occasions. We build on these historical observations with an experimental study and a corpus study on a synchronic Dutch alternation, where avoidance of homophony between present and past tense can appear. Plurals of verbs with a stem ending in a dental show homophony with the present when they are used in the preterite (compare zetten ‘put’ pst-pl with zetten ‘put’ prs-pl). This homophony can be avoided by using the perfectum (hebben gezet ‘have put’). A wug-style experiment shows that verbs with dental stem are indeed used significantly more in the perfectum in the plural than in the singular, while verbs without dental stem do not show this difference. A corpus study on Dutch further corroborates these results. Combined, these studies make a strong case for homophony avoidance as a plausible mechanism of language change.

中文翻译：

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谁害怕同音异义词？避免同音异义的多方法论


避免同音异义经常被认为是语言变化的一种机制。我们通过应用两种研究——语料库研究和实验数据——来研究荷兰语中的这一机制，以寻找基于早期历史观察的主张的支持。纵观荷兰语历史，避免同音异义曾多次被认为是语言变化或抑制变化的原因。我们以这些历史观察为基础，对共时荷兰语交替进行了实验研究和语料库研究，其中可以避免现在时和过去时之间的同音。词干以齿形结尾的复数动词在用于过去时时与现在时同音（比较 zetten ‘put’ pst-pl 和 zetten ‘put’ prs-pl）。通过使用perfectum（hebben gezet“have put”）可以避免这种谐音。 wug 式的实验表明，带有牙干的动词在复数形式中确实比单数形式中使用得更多，而没有牙干的动词则没有显示出这种差异。对荷兰语的语料库研究进一步证实了这些结果。综合起来，这些研究有力地证明了避免同音异义是语言变化的一种合理机制。