ABSTRACT:Professor Yuen Ren Chao (赵元任), ex-president of the Linguistic Society of America, once wrote a homophonic discourse entitled "Shī shì shí shī shĭ 施氏食狮史" (Story of Stone Grotto Poet: Eating Lions) (Chao [1960]1980, 149). But so far, no one knows why such a discourse is possible. This paper makes an attempt to discuss this issue. It is argued that the possibility of homophonic discourse is principally attributed to the fact that unlike English, the Chinese language has a unique bipartite spelling system, i.e., one composed of Chinese character spellings and Chinese pinyin spellings, and that they correspond to each other in terms of over 400 Chinese Pinyin syllables with variations through tones which satisfy the phonological, graphological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic premises for the construal of a homophonic discourse.摘要:前美国语言协会主席赵元任教授曾经写了一篇题为《施氏食狮史》的同音文。但迄今为止，尚无人知道该类同音文何以可能。对此本文进行了探讨。认为同音文之所以可能，主要是因为汉语不像英语，它有一个独特的双重拼写系统，即一个由汉字拼写与汉语拼音拼写构成的系统，这两个拼写子系统通过超过400个音节加声调变化相对应，能满足同音文构建所需的语音、拼写、形态、句法、语义和语用等前提条件。

中文翻译：

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为什么谐音话语是可能的？

摘要：美国语言学会前会长赵元任教授曾写过一篇谐音话语《石窟诗：食狮史》（Shī shì shí shī shĭ施氏食狮史）（赵元任）。 [1960]1980, 149)。但到目前为止，没有人知道为什么这样的话语是可能的。本文试图对这个问题进行讨论。有人认为，谐音话语的可能性主要是由于汉语与英语不同，有一种独特的二分拼写系统，即由汉字拼写和汉语拼音拼写组成的，它们在400多个汉语拼音音节术语，满足音韵、字形、形态、句法、语义、