Repetition of words

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Is there much difference between the Chinese theory and a syllabic European theory whether the VMS words or the glyphs represent syllables?

That would be an interesting hypothesis to explore.  (If you don't believe the Chinese theory, that is.) 

One possible problem is the number of different "syllables".  I *suspect* that Chinese languages have more distinct syllables than European languages, because of tones. But maybe not.

European languages also inflect many words by appending suffixes that are generally one syllable or half a syllable.  Think of "-ed" and "-ing" in English or "-us" and "-um" in Latin, "-re" in Italian, etc.  Maybe that feature can be detected and used to distingush from "Chinese".

All the best, --stolfi