Correlating complexity: A typological approach

Randomization tests in language typology

“…Some of the techniques described here were previously demonstrated in Bickel & Nichols (2003, 2005b and Janssen, Zúñiga, & Bickel (2004); for related approaches, see also Shosted (2006) and Maddieson (2006).…”

Introduction: Linguistic complexity

“…Nichols 2009;Shosted 2006). Aspects investigated include the size of the phoneme inventory, the incidence of marked phonemes, tonal distinctions, suprasegmental phonology, phonotactic restrictions, and the maximum complexity of consonant clusters.…”

“…Shosted (2006), for example, investigates morphological and phonological complexity in a sample of 34 languages and finds that there is no significant correlation, and no trade-off, between morphological and phonological complexity scores; Nichols (2009) likewise explores local complexities in a wide range of languages and fails to obtain a trade-off. FenkOczlon and Fenk (2008: 63) do diagnose »balancing effects« between local complexities, but not to the extent that the equi-complexity dogma could be assumed to hold true under all circumstances.…”

“…Qualitative aspects of complexity, such as the internal complexity of the rules themselves, are not taken into account. (Arends 2001: 180) Students of absolute-quantitative complexity have been interested in, e.g., the number of grammatical categories in a language (Shosted 2006), the number of phonemic contrasts (McWhorter 2001), or the length of the minimal description of a linguistic system (Dahl 2004 as often as not inflection leads to the development of morphophonological processes, which constitute an added component of a grammar to be learned […] Meanwhile, suppletion also complexifies an area of grammar according to our metric. The various suppletive forms of be in English (am, are, is, was, were, been, and similarly in most Indo-European languages) render these languages more complex in this area than languages where the copula is invariable across person and number in the present (McWhorter 2001: 137) Irregularity-based complexity is an absolute notion in that the definition of what should count as ›irregular‹ is theory-driven, but once again the cost associated with such irregularity is incurred by language users.…”

Review of Trudgill (2011): Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity

“…(We recognize that he is not alone in rejecting this tenet; see, for example, the related articles in Sampson, Gil, & Trudgill 2009). Following Shosted (2006), Sampson (2009), andDahl (2009), Trudgill further rejects the view, common among historical linguists, that simplification in one aspect of a language generally results in complexification elsewhere; i.e., that simplification and complexification are "zero sum" processes. In view of the lack of scholarly agreement about how to define syntactic complexity, Trudgill leaves syntax out of consideration.…”