Language complexity: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:51, 22 December 2019

Revision as of 23:01, 22 December 2019

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In 2001 the compensation hypothesis was eventually refuted by the [[African-American]] [[creolistics|creolist]] [[John McWhorter]] who pointed out the absurdity of the idea that, as languages change, each would have to include a mechanism that calibrates 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" />