Glossary and Credits

5. Glossary

agglutinating language A language in which morphemes are easily divided, and which tends to express only one meaning per morpheme

biological adaptation An inherited or acquired modification in organisms that makes them better suited to survive and reproduce in a particular environment

classifer A counter word that is used to accompany nouns and can be considered to “classify” the noun depending on the type of its referent

consonant clusters A group of consonants which have no intervening vowel

cultural adaptation The process of ensuring a message, whether translated into another language or not, is presented using cultural references and role models that your intended audience will identify with

cultural evolution the idea that human cultural change can be described as a Darwinian evolutionary process that is similar in key respects to biological/genetic evolution.

fusional language A language which tends to express one meaning per morpheme

human natural language Any language which arises, unpremeditated, in the brains of human beings

ideophones Words that evoke an idea in sound, often a vivid impression of certain sensations or sensory perceptions

index of fusion The degree to which a language tends to express one meaning per morpheme

index of synthesis The degree to which a language tends to have many morphemes per word

inflection Conceptual categories that do not create new stems. Rather, they add specific “grammatical” information to already existing stems.

indicative used to make factual statements, ask questions, or express opinions as if they were facts.

innateness Existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth

isolating language A language in which words tend to consist of a single morpheme

language family A group of languages of related through descent from a common ancestor

language universals A trait or property of language that exists, or has the potential toexist, in all language

lexical entry A linguistic sign of any size that expresses content meaning

nominal A term sometimes used as an alternative for, or replacement of, noun in languages that do no distinguish adjectives and nouns as distinct part-of-speech

mark features the additional articulatory features that are more complex in nature and less preferred in sound sequences

morphology The branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words

phonology The system of contrastive relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language

phonological hierarchies Preference order of phonology in single phonemes and phonemic clustering across various positions in a word

phrasal categories Traditional parts of speech (noun, verbs) in phrase structure grammar

positionals Describe the position and form of persons and objects

semantic Relating to meaning in language or logic

sign language A system of communication using visual gestures and signs, as used by deaf people

sonority Openness of a sound

sonority sequencing universals Ranking of speech sounds by amplitude that is common

syntax The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language

typology Subfield of linguistic that studies and classifies languages according to their structural and functional features

universal grammar The ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain

verb affix A bound morpheme attached to a root or stem of a verb, modifying its meaning in some way

word class A category of words of similar form or function; a part of speech (noun, verb, adjectives etc)

word order The sequence of words in a sentence, especially as governed by grammatical rules and as affecting meaning

6. Credits

ALL THE APPLAUSE FOR:

IRIS LEE – U1230636C

EUNICE LIM – U1230490E

NUR FAEZAH BTE IBRAHIM – U1230239H

Conclusion and References

3. Conclusion

Language Universals and Language Evolution

Even though there are no linguistic models readily available for in-depth study of various aspects of Linguistics, many theories have been borrowed from other disciplines to draw parallels for linguists to revise and generate theories to explain the phenomenons found in linguistics. The use of typological universal has allowed for study on psychology in human thinking and learning theories (Greenberg, 1957). More importantly, typology can be applied to most languages in discerning the clustering of attributes that are present in the language. The existence of such variations across language universals could support for the progress of languages across time. Perhaps, with enough linguistic evidence, the proto-form of language could shed light on how language had evolved as a communication system, by humans for humans.

Based on what have been discussed, universals in morphology, syntax and phonology showed evidence for both innateness and adaptation for language evolution. Yet, there still remains room for much debate on how universals should be determined and how it can be related to the huge umbrella of Language Evolution.

4. References

Ameka, F. & Levinson, S. C. (2007). The typology and semantics of locative predication: Posturals, positionals and other beasts. [Special Issue]. Linguistics, 45(5). 847-872.

Berent, I, Lennertz, T, Jongho, J, Moreno, M. A., & Smolensky, P. (2008) Language universals in human brains. PNAS, 105(14), 5321-5325.

Bohnemeyer, J. & Brown, P. (2007). Standing divided: Dispositional verbs and locative predications in two mayan languages. Linguistics, 45(5), 1105-1151.

Chung, S. (2012). Are lexical categories universal? the view from Chamorro. Theoretical Linguistics, 38(1), 1-56.

Comrie, B. (1989). Language Universals and Linguistic Typology:Syntax and Morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2nd edn. 33-49

Dunn, M., Greenhill, S. J., Levinson, S. C. & Gray, R. D. (2011). Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 473, 79-82.

Enfield, N. J. (2004). Adjectives in Lao. In Dixon, R. M. W. & Aikhenvald, A. Y. (Eds.), Adjective classes: A cross-linguistic typology (pp. 323-347). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Evans, N. & Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 429-492.

Goldin-Meadow, S., So, W. C., Özyürek, A. & Mylander, C. (2008). The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events nonverbally. PNAS, 105(27), 9163-9168.

Greenberg, J. H. (1957). The nature and uses of linguistic typologies. International Journal of American Linguistics, 23(2), 68-77.

Greenberg, J. H. (1969). Language universals: A Research Frontier. Science, 166(3904), 473-478.
Haspelmath, M. (2007). Pre-established categories don’t exist: Consequences for language description and typology. Linguistics Typology, 11(1), 119-132.

Hengeveld, K. (1992). Parts of speech. In Fortescue, M., Harder, P. & Kristoffersen, L. (Eds.), Layered structure and reference in a functional perspective (pp. 29-55). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jäger, G., & Rooij, R. V. (2007) Language structure: psychological and social constraints. Synthese,150, 99-130

McGregor, W. B. (2012). Linguistics: An Introduction. (2nd Ed). New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Myles, F. (2004). From Data to Theory: the Over-Representation of Linguistic Knowledge in SLA.Transactions Of The Philological Society, 102(2), 139-168.

Nuckolls, J. B. (1996). Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13(4), 707–26.

Pinker, S. & Jackendoff, R., (2005). The faculty of language: what’s special about it? Cognition, 95, 201-236.

Shopen, T. (Ed.). (2007). Language typology and syntactic description Vol I: Clause structure (2nd ed.). United Kingdom, UK: Cambridge University Press

Toratani, K. (2007). An RRG analysis of manner adverbial mimetics. Language and Linguistics, 8(1), 311-342.

Part I: Looking into Typological Universals

2. Typology

In all efforts put into understanding LUs and their occurrence, a methodology of categorizing languages according to type was proposed, leading to a new branch of linguistic study known as typology in LUs.

Typology as language classification allows for comparison of formal modes among languages, i.e., the internal attributes of languages and the presence of such attribute would establish its place in the respective category

(Greenberg, 1957)

Typology works in a manner of efficiently sorting out linguistic features that are highly noticeable across languages and picking them to be the head of a type. Following which, grouping languages according to these common features would allow linguists to draw patterns and systematically limit languages accordingly (Greenberg, 1969).

Hence, three major areas in linguistics (Morphology, Syntax and Phonology) will be explored and within each area, occurrence of either type of typological universals will be used as plausible explanations for the manifestation and mechanisms behind language universals. In turn, these evidences would be used to postulate for the evolution of human languages

2.1 Morphology

At face value, morphological difference is one of the most glaring differences among languages. Without deeper investigation, language universals can be easily dismissed as void. Every language seems to possess a combinatorial system for morphemes that is not exactly the same as the other language – especially one that comes from another language family. This combinatorial principle, a hallmark of human language, leads to the complex nature of morphological processes and structure. Additionally, the complexity of each morphological structure varies and this is mirrored by the difference which spans from grammatical organisation of morphemes to how they are stored as lexical entries (Evans & Levinson, 2009). Proponents of language universals postulate that language differences can be analysed through a more abstract investigation which would render these differences to be negligible. However, critics are adamant about leaving these differences as they are in light of language diversity (Evans & Levinson, 2009).

Canonical language types

At word level, the difference in how a word is formed can be broadly categorised into three: isolating, agglutinating, and fusional. For isolating language type, there appears to be one-to-one agreement between the words and morphemes. The languages which come close to the isolating type is Vietnamese and Chinese. Meanwhile, in agglutinating language, a word is usually made up of more than one morphemes. These morphemes are distinctive and have consistent forms. A close example would be Turkish. For fusional language, there is no well-defined boundaries between morphemes. A word consists of unsegmented morphemes of different grammatical and verbal categories such as Russian.

However, it would be erroneous to simplistically categorise languages of the world into these language types. Majority of the world’s languages do not conform specifically to one of these. Instead, they “fall between the two extremes on each of the indices of synthesis and fusion.” (Comrie,1989) Index of synthesis refers to the number of morphemes per word while index of fusion refers to number of grammatical categories per morpheme.

Affixes

In every scientific research including one that relates to language, there is an intrinsic need to search for general laws in the construction of languages. Researchers would then look into extending these laws to its widest possible scope.(Van Der Hulst,2008 ) These laws come in the form of universals where they are claimed to exist at the “deeper levels of analysis and theorising” (Van Der Hulst, 2008). However, the extent to which universals can be applied remain unanswered. Among the substantive universals that are claimed to be applicable to all languages include Verb Affixes (Pinker & Bloom,1990). This claim is immediately counteract by the fact that it does not hold true for all languages. For instance, Mandarin and Malay languages do not mark tense and many spoken languages such as German lack aspect.

Lexical distinctions

In defence of Language Universals, Tallerman (2009) postulates that “examining languages more closely, or at a higher level of abstraction often reveals critical similarities which superficial descriptions can obscure.”

This is highlighted in the example of the Wakashan languages, Nuuchahnult. (Tallerman, 2009) In this language, nominal and verbal roots are not easily distinguishable by morphology. In addition, lexical roots including nouns can take verbal inflectional morphology thus superficially postulating the absence of noun and verb distinction. A deeper level of analysis however, reveals that there is a behavioural differences between inflections on noun and verb . For instance, proper names cannot take on third singular indicative verbal inflection -maa as illustrated below:

1. mamuuk-maa quuʔas-ʔi

work-3s:INDIC man-the

“The man is working.”

2. quuʔas-maa mamuuk- ʔi

man-3s:INDIC work-the

“The working one is a man”

3. *Jack-maa

Jack-3s:INDIC

(“He is Jack.”)

In another part of inflection, the suffix –(m)it applies on both nouns and verb. However, this past tense marker in Nuuchanult conveys the exact meaning of “former” for proper names (4) but it simply indicates past tense when inflected on verbal predicate (5).

4. mamuuk-(m)it -(m)aħ

work-PAST-1s.INDIC

“I was working.”

5. ʔuunuu ʔani ʔuumiik-(m)it-qa

because that whaler-PAST-SUBORDINATE

“because he was a former whaler”

Nuuchanult language highlights Tallerman’s argument that language universals may not be evident at face value. It takes careful investigation to draw out similar features between languages. (Evans & Levinson, 2009) claim that not all language distinguish their major lexical categories; nouns, verbs, adjectives. But the above examples suggest a flaw in their claims. Perhaps other languages that are seemingly invariant in lexical categories may reveal these distinctions through a careful morphological analysis.

2.2 Syntax

Pinker & Bloom (1990), proposed that there are substantive universals common to all languages. These substantive universals are the building blocks of grammar that would be present in languages as either an explicit inventory or as a consequence of more abstract mechanisms.

Word Classes

Major phrasal categories for example, would start with a major lexical item. That means that if a verb phrase is present, it is because the head for the phrase is a verb. In other words, major lexical phrasal categories are assumed to be present in all languages. It appears to be a sound argument as many English language speakers would agree that the aforementioned categories can be applied to English. In addition, many second language learners are taught the new language first by assuming these categories. Myles (2004) supports this as in her study, it was shown that learners of second language do project the lexical categories in the initial stage and subsequently move on to phrasal categories of varying difficulty level.

Moreover, until recent years, many still agreed with this notion that such categories are universal with Chung (2012) study on Chamorro as one such example. Chamorro is an Austronesian language which has been previously studied and conclusions were drawn saying that Chamorro is a language with unusual lexical category system. These conclusions were drawn based on true observations of the language. However, Chung (2012) argues that though it was based on true observations, it was too small a sample size of Chamorro morphological and syntax to make any “robust conclusions” (pp.50). Upon a further study on Chung’s part, it was found that Chamorro does have the usual categories such as nouns and verbs with multiple syntactic functions. Through this, with compelling evidence of such categories to be found in many languages, the idea of language universals is very much appealing.

However, word classes as examined by Evans & Levinson (2009), seem not to be as universal as one thought. They found counter evidence in varying languages studied by others to refute the claim of ‘all languages having the same word classes’. Enfield (2004) and Hengeveld (1992) both found that not all languages have adjectives or an adverb class. Languages that lack in a certain ‘word class’ would seemingly make up for it through other means like another form of modification with morphology for example (Hengeveld, 1992). Furthermore there are word classes not commonly found in Indo-European languages (Evans & Levinson, 2009).

Ideophones and positionals to name a few, are word classes that integrate syntactically in the language. Ideophones are most typically words that depict an idea of a sound, sight, smell or certain sensory perceptions (Nuckolls, 1996). Japanese is one such language that uses ideophones syntactically in the language. An example below extracted from Torantani (2007) is presented below where the ideophone is embedded in the syntax as an adverb (pp.322).

In the example, gósi-gósi is an ideophone which depicts the sound of scrubbing or rubbing something. It functions as an adverb in the example as it describes the rubbing of the floor. This shows that the ideophone is part of the sentence syntactically.

Positionals can be easily found in Mayan Languages and mainly describe a person or object’s position and form (Ameka & Levinson, 2007; Bohnemeyer & Brown, 2007). On the other hand, classifiers are also a word class that cannot be put across all languages to be universally defined as they are not “identical in nature” (Evans & Levinson, 2009, p.435). Numeral classifiers in East Asian and Mesoamerican Language can classify objects in various ways. It can be classify counted objects according to shape, size, texture, and many more to name a few. As Haspelmath (2007), argues that word classes are not exactly the same between any two languages in morphosyntactic or semantic properties.

Based on the above discussion, it seems that universal traits that could be found in word classes of syntax are not as substantial as one might have thought. Nonetheless, it does seem that with regard to the word classes of the different language it points towards the adaptationist view in the respect of language evolution.

Word Order

A study of Greenberg word order universals by Shopen (2007), found that across a wide sample languages both related and unrelated showed two sets of word order relation. The first is where dependent word order relations have a correlation with verb and object order. The second showed that word orders are independent of this. Dunn, Greenhill, Levinson & Gray (2011), however, argued that few word order features are correlated. They also argued that the functional dependencies observed between these traits are more lineage specific than universal. That is to say most languages studied in detail and where the apparent universal traits are found are mainly from languages in the same language family rather than across language families. Dunn et al. (2007) argued that within a language family, similar traits are found across these languages while languages from a different family have different traits. This was most likely the product of cultural evolution thus determining the linguistic features thereby forming the current language system (Dunn et al., 2007). The differing view on the existence of word order universal is truly interesting indeed. Cultural evolution that comes into play may prove to be an interesting perspective in the course of trying to find out more about the universals in language with regard to word order in syntax.

Goldin-Meadow, So, Özyürek & Mylander (2008) showed that speakers of different languages with different set of word orders seem to express events nonverbally in the same manner. Participants came from different linguistic backgrounds with native languages that have different word order. It was expected that the event was to be expressed through gestures following the word order of the participants own native language. Results showed that even with different linguistic backgrounds, participants had the same “word order” in expressing the same event through the same series of actions. Interestingly, none of the participants displayed the word order of their language. This study might be a clue that shows an evolution of gestural language as it seem that it is a natural system that humans have when expressing things nonverbally with no knowledge of sign language.

The word order in languages do not seem to be very controversial as little evidence is presented to support the presence of universal traits. However, in the case of the non-verbal communication in terms of the series of gestures and actions, there seem to be a specific way of doing it. This could open a new perspective to the argument of language evolution being innate. After all, with no prior knowledge of sign language, a group of people with no common language between them is able to communicate effectively the desired sentence.

2.3 Phonology

Typological differences in phonology are observed in marked features and phonological hierarchies (Greenberg, 1969).

Marked features refer to the additional articulatory features that are more complex in nature and less preferred in sound sequences.

Phonological hierarchies refer to the preference order of phonology in single phonemes and phonemic clustering across various positions in a word.

For instance, according to Greenberg (1969), nasal vowels require an “additional resonance chamber, the nasal, besides the oral chamber which functions alone in the oral vowels”(Greenberg, 1969, p.476). Nasal vowels are considered to be a marked feature in languages that have both nasal and oral vowels. Similarly, nasal vowels are less preferred over oral vowels because of their restricted acoustic environments, where they can occur in selected word formations. Thus, nasal vowels are placed on a lower position than oral vowels within the phonological hierarchy.

Consonant Clusters

According to sonority sequencing universals (where sonority is loudness of a speech sound), language users would generally prefer consonant sequences (C1C2, where C denotes consonant) with high sonority difference over those with low sonority difference between the sequences.

blif > bnif > bdif > lbif

In particular, Berent, Lennertz, Jun, Moreno, Smolensky (2008) had done a research study on word-initial consonant cluster preference. The guiding principle of the study is that speakers, when presented with perceived mispronounced words, tend to repair them within their perception to be correctly pronounced. For example, speakers of languages with word-initial consonant clusters (i.e. English speakers and the word ‘black’) would be able to perceive blif as monosyllabic while words beginning with lbif would be misperceived as lebif, changing the syllable count to disyllabic.

In the study, they recruited native Korean speakers. Due to their lack in consonant clusters in the beginning of words in their language, it presented a clear contrast with English speakers who are regularly exposed to word-initial consonant clusters. The study posited that if Korean speakers demonstrated similar preference order and syllabic-count judgement as English speakers, their perception of initial consonant clusters would be attributed to reasons beyond exposure to certain speech sounds.

They found that Korean speakers did show preference for consonant sequences in an order that is similar to their English speaking counterparts. Hence this was in support of the hypothesis of the study: “adult human brain possess knowledge of universal properties of linguistic structures absent from their language” (Berent, et al, 2008, p.5324). This instinct could be attributed to the human brain’s capacity in universal linguistic knowledge, advocating for human’s innate ability to produce language.

Sign Languages

In Evans and Levinson (2009), they talked about physical characteristics of vocal tract being “the clearest evidence for biological basis for language” (p.433). At the same time, they also brought up another form in which human natural language are realised: natural sign languages.

Sign languages are gestural rather than verbal, and it is created in by people, for people, who are unable to acquire verbal languages, such as Hearing Impaired.

Perhaps, in using sign languages to disprove phonological universals would seem inadequate – after all, signed languages have no need of speech sounds. However, Evans & Levinson (2009) did emphasized that the existence of sign languages account for the “modality-plastic nature of our language capacity” (p. 433). This implies that human brains, to a certain extent, are adapted to be able to create new communication systems where the existing system is not longer suitable for their usage. This further emphasize for the notion of languages are adapted in relation to our cognitive capabilities.

Therefore, the conflicting evidences as illustrated above had drawn an indistinct picture of how phonological universals in languages are supported in Linguistics and served to show how capricious languages are.

Chapter 6 -Typology in Language Universals

2015: Mak Ka Yan Alison, Shin Da Yoon
2014: Iris Lee, Faezah, Eunice Lim

1. Introduction

Language Evolution and Universals

The evolutionary process of human natural languages, since its first appearance, has always been a huge gap within linguistic research studies. There are no adequate evidence that could account for how language first came about, how it had initially evolved in human and how it transformed into what it is today. One way to investigate these questions could be through the manifestation of universals in language and cognition. By identifying the prevalence of universals across languages, it could aid in clarification in the manner of actualization in language evolution.

It is hypothesized that universals in languages could possibly open a path leading to resolving the core issue: whether language had been evolved to be adapted to human brains or have humans evolved to be able to use languages.

Universals in Languages

Language Universal (LU) refers to the “certain properties that most or all languages share”

(McGregor, p.251)

LU limits the ways in which human acquire language and how they use languages. LU is concerned with the evidence of commonality in linguistics features across all or most human natural languages.

Linguists have been working hard to resolve the arguments on whether there are universals in human natural languages and how to explain their presence. Universals in languages serve as the platform for much debate in nature versus nurture: whether universals in language and cognition are in support for the view of biological/cognition adaptation or cultural adaptation. There has been much research conducted and yet till now, linguists are barely getting close to a consensus. Although many of the studies have led to astonishing findings, none were able to fully explain the presence of universals in the diversity of languages spoken around the world. In seeking for empirical evidences, it is crucial to first better understand what is meant by universals in language and what theories had been derived from it.

There have been arguments that LU is in support of innateness. Innateness refers to the instinctive nature that comes with birth; abilities that are not learned. In the context of language development, linguists in favour of this theory would support that human brains has adapted itself to allow humans to have the ability to speak, even without the right linguistic environment – they believe that no matter the environment in which human develop, they will have the ability to talk in a language.

Chomsky postulated the principles of “Universal Grammar” (UG), in representation of human’s predisposition to acquire language (Jäger & Rooij, 2007). Generative linguistsclaimed that without such language mechanisms in human brains, there would not be a communication system developed by humans for humans. This shared mental faculty allowed for language learning capacity in humans, despite the issue of poverty of stimulus. It was therefore suggested that UG explained the presence of universals in languages (Jäger & Rooij, 2007) – all humans share the same ability to utilise languages, and through this ability, the languages that they create would contain similar features.

Other theories of LU include biological adaptation through natural selection, vertical and horizontal transmissions of cultural evolution (Pinker & Bloom, 1990; Pinker & Jackendoff, 2005; Jäger & Rooij, 2007), of which these would be in favour for language adapting itself to the brain’s mental capacity, allowing for learnability.

Part 2: McWhorter’s approach to complexity

Apart from Sinnemäki’s methods to approaching linguistic complexity, there are of course many others who have attempted to do the same. McWhorter (1995) argued that approaching complexity and measuring the degrees of relative typological complexity of languages requires a metric. He hence formulated a metric in terms of:

Number of marked phonemes

A phonemic inventory is more complex if it has more marked members.

The notion of rule

A syntax is more complex than another to the extent that it requires the processing of more rules.

Verbal constructions

A grammar is more complex than another to the extent that it gives overt and grammaticalized expression to more fine-grained semantic and/or pragmatic distinctions than another.

Inflectional morphology

In most cases, inflectional morphology renders a grammar more complex.

Overall, it should be noted that there are various ways to approach complexity possibly due to the fact that there has not been a single unified definition of complexity among researchers. This area of topic is generally broad and to focus on one approach or metric system in measuring complexity could cause inaccuracy when using it across all languages.

Part 1: Sinnemäki’s approach to complexity

According to Sinnemäki (2008, 2011), a common problem in defining and understanding complexity is how to measure complexity in a reliable manner. Since there is no unified definition among researchers in the sciences of complexity including linguistics, it can be difficult to understand complexity and the “question of complexity is bound to remain elusive” (Sinnemäki, 2008, 2011). Hence in studying and approaching linguistic complexity, there may be a few points to consider as well as a number of clarifications that should be made such as:

Complexity is separated from difficulty (Dahl, 2004);
Complexity is classified in different types (Rescher 1998);
Local complexity is separated from global complexity (Miestamo 2008);
Complexity is measured as the description length of an object’s structure (Gell-Mann 1995).

Firstly, Dahl (2004) claims that it is important to keep complexity separated from difficulty as different users experience a different level of difficulty, and perhaps also between different usage events of the same user.

The second point to note is that there is also an unexpected unity behind the different formulations for complexity. To explain this, Lloyd (2001) classifies complexity metrics under three broad types, whereas Rescher (1998) classifies it in only a few modes. This shows that many researchers do agree that there are different notions of complexity. While it is impossible to devise a “correct” metric, it is feasible to approach language complexity by classifying it into different categories.

The third point is that local complexity should be separated from global complexity. Local complexity is about the complexity of some part of an entity, whereas global complexity is about the overall complexity of that similar entity. It is therefore rather impractical to measure the overall complexity of a particular linguistic system, as it is quite impossible to devise a fully comprehensive description of the grammar of any single language (Miestamo 2008). It is, however, both possible and practical to measure the local complexity of a system for example, the complexity of the numeral system, the case system, or the verb’s argument structure (e.g. Sinnemäki 2011).

The last point is complexity is intuitively situated between order and disorder. To put it simply, the general intuition is that when a language has more “structural units/rules/representations” (Hawkins, 2009: 252) in its system, it would be more complex. Since there has been no unified metric system for complexity, the best way to capture this is to measure the length of description of an object’s structure (effective complexity, Gell-Mann 1995) instead of the length of description of the object itself (e.g. Kolmogorov complexity). This is because the latter is usually related to randomness with complexity, while the former, randomness with low complexity.

According to Sinnemäki (2008, 2011), he argued that while it is impossible to compare the overall complexity of one language to that of another, it is possible to compare complexity across languages when focusing on particular types of effective complexity in their local contexts.

Why separate complexity & difficulty?

As mentioned in the first point made by Sinnemäki, it is vital to treat complexity and difficulty as two separate concepts. There are a few reasons as to why one should separate complexity and difficulty, as explained below:

Description and operation are two separate tasks;

These two tasks can be done independently of one another. Native speakers are naturally able to talk fluently. They often do this without thinking about language description. To some degree however, description is possible without fluency. For example, it is possible for a new learner of a language to be able speak the language and yet make minimal mistakes, even without being fluent in the language.

The problem of finding a user-type neutral definition for complexity (Miestamo, 2008:24-29);

Different user-types (eg. speakers, hearers, 1st language acquirer, 2nd language learner) may have experienced different linguistic patterns, hence varying degrees of difficulty of using and processing a particular language. This in turn, can cause conflicting results in measuring complexity. A more objective and theory-based perspective should therefore be adopted in approaching complexity to avoid conflicting results in the measurement of complexity.

To avoid the problems in the evaluation measure of early generative grammar (Chomsky, 1965; Chomsky & Halle, 1968);

Researchers have long struggled with the evaluation measure of early generative grammar. This evaluation measure was used in child language acquisition as it was assumed that the framework that had a more brief description of the system would therefore allow a more accurate link to language acquisition. What researchers failed to realise was that “the shortest description was not necessarily the most plausible one psychologically” (Kiparsky 1968). It is thus important to separate complexity and difficulty in order to avoid the problems that were faced by researchers in the past.

Possible to determine independently the processing responses of the different types of complexity (Hawkins, 2004 & 2009).

Separating complexity and difficulty could show the varying degrees of processing responses of the different types of complexities.

Conclusion and References

6. Conclusion

This chapter has hoped to highlight to the reader the complex nature of the subject matter of linguistic complexity. While we have presented certain models and frameworks used to approach the subject matter, it is crucial to note that the linguistic community as a whole does not have a recognised model. This is thus a very important facet of linguistic complexity that require much further research before any more exploration of the topic may continue.

Linguistic complexity holds much value in terms of language learning and acquisition. It also has the ability to feature in other aspects of linguistics such as historical linguistics as so more research does hold benefits.

We have also tried to make it as accessible as possible and hope that linguistically and non-linguistically inclined readers learn something from our blog. We hope that you learn as much from reading this chapter as we have.

Thank You,

Sathrin and Sabrina

7. References

Akker, Peter (1987). Reduplications in Saramaccan. In Mervyn C. Alleyne (ed.), Studies in Saramaccan Language Structure, 17–40. Amsterdam: Instituut voor Algemene Taalwetenschap.

Chomsky, Noam 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle 1968. Sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.

Dahl, O. (Director) Lectures on linguistic complexity. Lecture conducted from , Stockholm.

Dahl, Ö. 2004. The growth and maintenance of linguistic complexity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Edmonds, B. 1999. Syntactic measures of complexity. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manchester.

Dworkin, R. (2002). Sovereign virtue: the theory and practice of equality. Harvard University Press.

Gell-Mann, M. 1995. What is complexity? Complexity 1(1): 16-19.

Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hawkins, John A. 2009. An efficiency theory of complexity and related phenomena. In Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language complexity as an evolving variable, 252-268. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hübler, Alfred W. 2007. Understanding complex systems. Complexity 12(5): 9-11.

Kiparsky, Paul 1997. The rise of positional licensing. In Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent (eds.), Parameters of morphosyntactic change, 460-494. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kusters, W. 2003. Linguistic complexity: The influence of social change on verbal inflection. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leiden.

Lloyd, S. 2001. Measures of complexity: A nonexhaustive list. IEEE Control Systems Magazine 21(4): 7-8.

McWhorter, John H. (1998). Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74: 788– 818.

McWhorter, John H. (2001). The rest of the story: Restoring pidginization to creole genesis theory. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages.

Miestamo, M. 2008. Grammatical complexity in a cross-linguistic perspective. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki, and F. Karlsson (eds.), Language complexity: Typology, contact, change, 23-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pallotti, G. (2014). A simple view of linguistic complexity. Second Language Research, 0267658314536435

Parkvall, Mikael 2008. The simplicity of creoles in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki, and Fred Karlsson (eds.), Language complexity: Typology, contact, change, 265-285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Prideaux, Gary D. 1970. On the selection problem. Research on Language & Social Interaction 2(2): 238-266.

Rescher, N. 1998. Complexity: A philosophical overview. New Brunswick: Transaction.

Simon, Herbert A. 1996. The sciences of the artificial (3rd edn). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sinnemäki, K. 2008. Complexity trade-offs in core argument marking. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki, and F. Karlsson (eds.), Language complexity: Typology, contact, change, 67- 88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Sinnemäki, K. 2011. Language universals and linguistic complexity Three case studies in core argument marking. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Helsinki. Available at https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/27782.

Steger, M. & Schneider, E. (2012). Complexity as a function of iconicity – The case of complement clause constructions in New Englishes. In Bernd Kortmann and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.), Linguistic complexity: second language acquisition, indigenization, contact. (pp. 156-191). Berlin: Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012

Part IV: Role of Pidgins and Creoles in Linguistic Complexity

The notion of complexity has been very prominent over the last decade, but there are many variations in defining complexity. From the explanations provided above, ‘complexity’ can be understood as objective or agent-related, but here we will look at more specifically structural complexity. Another explanation to ‘structural complexity’ apart from the one given above is that ‘the more distinction there are in a paradigm, the more complexity there is’ (Michaelis Susanne, 2010).

Hence, with regards to this structural complexity, do Creoles have simple or complex grammar? According to McWhorter (1998, 2001a), Creoles have the simplest grammars. This is attributed to three different reasons, as seen below:

There is little or no inflectional morphology;
There is no lexical or morphosyntactic tone;
There is no non-transparent derivational morphology.

To show that Creoles have the simplest grammar, McWhorter (2001) compared Saramaccan, a Creole language spoken mainly by the ethnic Africans near the Saramacca and upper Suriname Rivers in Suriname. Saramacca is based on two major source languages: English and Portuguese.

McWhorter (2001) claims that Saramaccan has neither inflectional morphology nor free equivalents such as noun classifiers, as seen in below:

first-one-under-5

He also claims that the only marked sounds in the Saramaccan phonemic inventory are three pre-nasalized stops and two pre-velarized ones. There are also no uvulars, ejectives or labialized consonants. However, there are some minimal pair distinctions for tense and lax mid vowels ([e]/[E], [o]/[O]).

The next point that he brought up is Saramaccan has only two derivational suffixes; reduplication derives attributive adjectives and resultatives from transitive verbs:

mi lái dí gbóto ‘I loaded the boat’

dí láilái gbóto ‘the loaded boat’

dí gbóto dE´ láilái ‘the boat is loaded’

Reduplication also non-productively generates nouns from verbs (Bakker 1987: 21):

síbi ‘to sweep’

sísíbi ‘broom’

Saramaccan does mark, such as marking causativity with a serial verb construction. However, in most cases, Saramaccan has no overt derivational strategy.

These reasons given by McWhorter gives a possible reason in explaining why Creoles have the simplest grammars within the world’s languages. Moving on to Pidgin, McWhorter (1998) also claims that ‘during the pidgin phase all ‘ornamental’ marking has been lost’ and ‘Creoles are too young to have been able to develop complex features of older languages’.

How complex are Pidgins and Creoles compared to other languages?

To answer this question, Parkvall (2008) examines 53 WALS (The World Atlas of Linguistic Structures) features which reflect degrees of complexity, and codes them additionally in 29 pidgins and creoles, comparing the degree of complexity of these creoles with 153 non-creoles of the WALS sample. 18 main features were used (a subset of Parkvall’s 53 features) to measure complexity:

3-70-300x141

He also added some Pidgin and Creole languages in the WALS sample and then ranked the complexity of these languages:

last-one

Thus Parkvall (2008) concludes: “Typologically speaking, Creoles stand out from languages in general, and the most salient difference is that they present a lower structural complexity. This does not necessarily have any bearing on issues regarding psycholinguistic complexity, however, and certainly not on their expressive potential.”

Creole languages are therefore said to be less complex grammatically (less over-specification, structural elaboration and irregularity). The comparison of complexity found in the languages also shows that complexity of a language correlates with its age (Parkvall, 2010). Older languages have more time to develop “unnecessary” elaboration (McWhorter, 2010), thus making them more complex than Creoles and Pidgins.

Other researchers have debated on the simplicity of the Pidgin and Creole languages (Michaelis, 2010). However, McWhorter (2001) argues that not all Creoles fall further towards the “simplicity” pole, but there are substantial amount of languages that display the 3 criterias stated above, and most of them happen to be Creole languages.

Part III: Approaches to Linguistic Complexity

Complexity is separated from difficulty (Dahl, 2004);
Complexity is classified in different types (Rescher 1998);
Local complexity is separated from global complexity (Miestamo 2008);
Complexity is measured as the description length of an object’s structure (Gell-Mann 1995).

There are a few reasons as to why one should separate complexity and difficulty, as explained below:

Description and operation are two separate tasks;

The problem of finding a user-type neutral definition for complexity (Miestamo, 2008:24-29);

To avoid the problems in the evaluation measure of early generative grammar (Chomsky, 1965; Chomsky & Halle, 1968);

Possible to determine independently the processing responses of the different types of complexity (Hawkins, 2004 & 2009).

Separating complexity and difficulty could show the varying degrees of processing responses of the different types of complexities.

Having identified the importance of separating complexity and difficulty as well as explaining the reasons to do so, we will now look at the other approaches to linguistic complexity:

Number of marked phonemes

A phonemic inventory is more complex if it has more marked members.

The notion of rule

A syntax is more complex than another to the extent that it requires the processing of more rules.

Verbal constructions

A grammar is more complex than another to the extent that it gives overt and grammaticalized expression to more fine-grained semantic and/or pragmatic distinctions than another.

Inflectional morphology

In most cases, inflectional morphology renders a grammar more complex.

Part II: Are all languages equally complex?

As seen in Part 1, complexity is a difficult subject matter to handle and gauge due to its subjective matter. Does that mean then that all languages are equally complex? And is this complexity natural? By natural, we mean to say that over time shifts in languages tend to happen and similar to the case of pidgins and creoles, languages get more complex structurally. These are the two questions we will be addressing in this section.

3.1 Are all languages complex?

Given the subjective nature of complexity and all the debates surrounding the topic, it appears that all languages are equally complex. It is also possible that where a language is complex in one aspect, it makes up for it by being simpler in another. For example a language might use only three tenses; the simple past, present and future but have a complicated article system. This is known as the ‘Theory of Equality’ This theory was first used philosophically in referring to public administration by Dworkin.

However as logical as this seems, there has not been any concrete empirical evidence in support of this theory. Scholars have yet been able to prove that when a language simplifies in one area, it complicates in another. As such, despite the logical facade of this theory, it has yet to be proven. Therefore we cannot conclusively say that all languages are equally complex. “mcwhorter”

There have been attempts at acquiring empirical evidence by researchers Fermin Moscoso Del Prado and McWhorter. However as the research is complex in nature, we have decided to not incorporate it to our wikichapter. Linguistically inclined readers looking for more in depth and academic information may use their work as a starting point.

[Back to Table of Contents]

3.2 Is Complexity natural?

Though we cannot assume each language is as complex as the next, we can say confidently that complexity in a language is a natural process, as will explained below.

The complexity in a language is a testament to the maturity of a language. As languages get spoken, over periods of time they will begin to grow to be be more specific depending on the needs of their it’s users. Also, as the language grows in number of speakers and gets passed down the generations, more accents and sociolects are created and enforced or rejected that can often cause phonological and structural changes to a language. For example the Great Vowel Shift in English between the 12th and 16th Century in England.

Here is a picture explaining that vowel shift. This image shows the vowel shift in English which resulted in many sounds changing as you may note from the image below. This change did not occur all at once but took 4 centuries before it stabilised. Due to the large timeframe of this shift, it cannot simply be attributed to either political or social changes. Rather it was an amalgamation of causes that resulted in this shift. As such it is seen mostly as a natural shift that languages go through. In many cases, languages shiftt to what is easier and requires lesser effort on the part of the speakers to produce.

vowel-shift
The borrowing of words from other languages especially in this increasingly connected world can also cause languages to become more complex. You can see the effect on the complication of language like in the Goose-Geese but Moose-Moose, singular and plural as explained in this succinct tumblr post.

If languages never matured and became more complex they would remain as creoles. Evidence that complexity is a marker of maturation are languages like Tok Pisin that start off at a rudimentary level and are Pidgins but later gain complexity and become Creoles. More on this can be found in 5. Role of Pidgins and Creoles in Linguistic Complexity.
[Back to Table of Contents]