Language complexity: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:43, 31 January 2023

Revision as of 14:01, 12 October 2023

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=== Equal complexity hypothesis ===

{{POV section|date=July 2021}}During the 20th century, linguists and [[Anthropology|anthropologists]] adopted a [[Standpoint theory|standpoint]] that would reject any [[Nationalism|nationalist]] ideas about superiority of the languages of establishment. The first known quote that puts forward the idea that all languages are equally complex comes from Rulon S. Wells III, 1954, who attributes it to [[Charles F. Hockett]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Joseph |first1=John E. |last2=Newmeyer |first2=Frederick J. |date=2012-01-01 |title='All Languages Are Equally Complex': The rise and fall of a consensus |url=https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/hl.39.2-3.08jos |journal=Historiographia Linguistica |language=en |volume=39 |issue=2–3 |pages=341–368 |doi=10.1075/hl.39.2-3.08jos |issn=0302-5160}}</ref> While laymen never ceased to consider certain languages as simple and others as complex, such a view was erased from official contexts. For instance, the 1971 edition of [[Guinness Book of World Records]] featured [[Saramaccan language|Saramaccan]], a creole language, as "the world's least complex language". According to linguists, this claim was "not founded on any serious evidence", and it was removed from later editions.<ref name="Arends2001">{{cite journal |last1=Arends |first1=Jacques |title=Simple grammars, complex languages |journal=Linguistic Typology |volume=5 |issue=2/3 |pages=180–182 |year=2001 |issn =1430-0532 }}</ref> Apparent complexity differences in certain areas were explained with a balancing force by which the simplicity in one area would be compensated with the complexity of another; e.g. [[David Crystal]], 1987:

{{Quote|text=All languages have a complex grammar: there may be relative simplicity in one respect (e.g., no word-endings), but there seems always to be relative complexity in another (e.g., word-position).<ref name="McWhorter2001">{{cite journal |last1=McWhorter |first1=John H. |title=The world's simplest grammars are creole grammars |journal=Linguistic Typology |volume=5 |issue=2/3 |pages=125–166 |year=2001 |issn =1430-0532 |doi=10.1515/lity.2001.001 |s2cid=16297093 }}</ref> }}

In 2001 [[creolistics|creolist]] [[John McWhorter]] argued against the compensation hypothesis. McWhorter contended that it would be absurd if, as languages change, each had a mechanism that calibrated it according to the complexity of all the other 6,000 or so languages around the world. He underscored that linguistics has no knowledge of any such mechanism.<ref name="McWhorter2001" /> Revisiting the idea of differential complexity, McWhorter argued that it is indeed creole languages, such as Saramaccan, that are structurally "much simpler than all but very few older languages". In McWhorter's notion this is not problematic in terms of the equality of creole languages because simpler structures convey [[logic|logical meanings]] in the most straightforward manner, while increased language complexity is largely a question of features which may not add much to the functionality, or improve usefulness, of the language. Examples of such features are [[Inalienable possession|inalienable possessive]] marking, [[switch-reference]] marking, syntactic asymmetries between [[Matrix clause|matrix]] and [[Subordination (linguistics)|subordinate clauses]], [[grammatical gender]], and other secondary features which are most typically absent in creoles.<ref name="McWhorter2001" /> McWhorter's notion that "unnatural" language contact in pidgins, creoles and other contact varieties inevitably destroys "natural" accretions in complexity perhaps represents a recapitulation of 19th-century ideas about the relationship between language contact and complexity.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McElvenny |first=James |date=2021 |title=Language Complexity in Historical Perspective: The Enduring Tropes of Natural Growth and Abnormal Contact |journal=Frontiers in Communication |volume=6 |doi=10.3389/fcomm.2021.621712 |issn=2297-900X|doi-access=free }}</ref>