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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" />
During the years following McWhorter's article, several books and dozens of articles were published on the topic.<ref name=
| last1 = Newmeyer | first1 = Frederick J.
| first2 = Lauren B. | last2 = Preston (eds.)
| title = Measuring Grammatical Complexity
| ___location = Oxford
| publisher = Oxford University Press
| pages =
| year = 2014
| isbn = 9780199685301}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=December 2016}} As to date, there have been research projects on language complexity, and several workshops for researchers have been organised by various universities.<ref name="Miestamo2008" />
== Complexity metrics ==
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