Single vs Double-Syllable word usage

[Altair]

A while ago, I posted some thoughts about this issue on this thread.

Although there has been a trend over the last three millenia for Chinese to move from monosyllabic to polysyllabic words, individual speakers have little choice in the matter. Compare the Chinese trend with the trend in English to move over the last two millenia from polysyllabic words to monosyllabic words. This helps explain the American pronunciation of a word like "laboratory" (= "labratory") and the general trend to reduce vowels in unaccented syllables, but says nothing about the choice an individual speaker to omit syllables.

Many books attribute the Chinese trend for longer words to the loss of phonetic contrasts. I have begun to doubt the power of this explanation, because there seems only a slight correlation between the existence of modern polysyllabic words to a need to avoid oral ambiguity. There seems to be a greater correlation to rhythmic constraints and a desire for ever greater shades of meaning. Compare the usage of the following pairs:

像 and 大象

写 and 书写

读 and 阅读

事 and 事情

时 and 时候

浅 and 金钱

能 and 能够

Only half of these pairs have any significant problems with ambiguity.