- Monosyllabic language
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A monosyllabic language is a language in which most words predominantly consist of a single syllable. Monosyllabic languages are often tonal languages; due to the use of tones, the number of available monosyllables is significantly more than in non-tonal languages, making shorter words more practical.
Though a monosyllable may include as many as six (or possibly more) consonants and a vowel (CCCVCCC), the basic monosyllable has the simple forms CV or VC.
Few known recorded languages preserve simple CV forms which apparently are fully functional roots conveying meaning, i.e. are words ---- but are not the reductions from earlier complex forms that we find in Mandarin Chinese CV forms, almost always derived with tonal and phonological modifications from Sino-Tibetan *(C)CV(C)(C)/(V) forms.
One such language that does record simple C(V) forms as words is hieroglyphic Egyptian where signs for single consonants (with implied vowel) denoting words are marked as words with a short horizontal line: e.g. 3 ₵, which means 'vulture (or perhaps 'the bird')'; and ' ₳, which means 'arm'. Another early language that allows us to see simple CV forms as words is cuneiform (and earlier pictographic) Sumerian, in which, with some reservations based on the multiple readings of most signs, we can specify the final V: e.g. da, 'side'; and sa, 'sinew'. Some scientists, however, believe that Sumerian may have been a tonal language, which seems plausible given the number of homonyms in the language.
An example of monosyllabic language is Old Chinese. Modern Chinese and Vietnamese are often erroneously referred to as monosyllabic languages; see Chinese morphology and Vietnamese morphology for discussion.
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