Are all languages equally complex

1
Are all languages equally complex?

• Östen Dahl
• oesten_at_ling.su.se

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Comparative complexityof languages

• Does it make sense to compare languages as to
  complexity?
• And if the answer is yes, can languages differ in
  complexity?
• Currently, there are two competing answers to the
  last question.

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The balancing hypothesis

• Most linguists who have had anything to say on
  this question favour the balancing hypothesis,
  which claims
• claims that lack of complexity in one component
  of the system will be compensated by greater
  complexity in another (and vice versa)
• which means that in principle all languages are
  equally complex

4
The competing view

• Recently, various linguists (e.g. John McWhorter)
  have challenged this view, claiming
• that languages indeed vary in complexity
• and that this variation is related to the
  ecology of the language, that is, to the
  conditions under which the language is spoken and
  transmitted to new generations

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Cross-linguistic comparison of complexity

• However, few attempts have been made to make
  systematic global comparisons of complexity
  cross-linguistically
• This presentation is an attempt to compare two
  closely related languages
• which guarantees relatively extensive
  commensurability
• But first I need to discuss the notion of
  linguistic complexity

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Two different notions of linguistic complexity

• In speaking of linguistic complexity, people tend
  to have two rather different notions in mind
• objective complexity
• agent-related complexity

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Objective complexity

• Objective complexity is the notion employed in
  information theory and the theory of complex
  systems
• It involves the idea that complexity is an
  objective property of an object or a system
• It is notoriously difficult to give a rigid
  definition of complexity in this sense

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Objective complexity

• Intuitively the complexity of an object is to be
  measured in terms of
• the amount of information needed to re-create it
  or alternatively,
• the length of the shortest possible complete
  description of it.

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Complexity as the inverse of compressibility
hahaha
3 ha
6 symbols compressed to 4
6 symbols compressed to 5
byebye
2 bye
6 symbols no compression
pardon
1 pardon
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Complexity of patterns

• However, this notion of complexity assigns a
  maximal complexity to a random string such as
• 8938903808593759992370605468754900512695312527432
  25097656256194458007812558557128906258971557617187
  518951416015625560394287109375416229248046875
• It is therefore preferable to talk not of the
  complexity of an object as such as of the set of
  regularities or patterns contained in it.

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System complexity vs. structural complexity

• In linguistics, such a complexity measure could
  apply to different things. Most importantly, it
  could apply on the one hand to
• a language seen as a system (system complexity)
• to the structure of utterances and expressions
  (structural complexity)

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Comparison of system complexity

• The (written) English definite article is less
  complex than the English indefinite article and
  than the French definite article

definite article - the
indefinite article - an before vowels a
elsewhere
definite article - l before vowels les
before plural nouns else la before feminine
nouns le elsewhere
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Structural complexity

• These sentences are generated by the same grammar
  but differ in structural complexity (BgtCgtA)

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System complexity

• System complexity could be seen as a measure of
  the content that language learners have to master
  in order to be proficient in a language.
• It does not as such tell us anything about the
  difficulty they have in learning, producing and
  understanding the language --
• -- that would take us to the other notion of
  complexity, viz. agent-related complexity.

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Agent-related complexity?

• Although agent-related complexity is perhaps the
  most popular way of understanding complexity in
  linguistics, I would in fact prefer to reserve
  the term complexity for objective complexity
  and use other terms such as cost, difficulty,
  and demandingness to denote complexity for a
  user.

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My general notion of complexity

• I am mainly concerned with objective system
  complexity understood as
• the length of the simplest complete description
  of the language as a system

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Kinds of complexity

• Phenogrammatical complexity
• Lexical metacomplexity
• Tightness

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Phenogrammatical complexity

• pertains to the relationship between a given
  content and its expression
• operationalized as
• given a configuration of lexical items, how
  complex are the rules that allow you to build a
  unitary expression out of those items?

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Lexical metacomplexity

• What is the complexity of the information
  associated with a lexical item?
• including
• segmental phonology
• suprasegmental phonology
• morphosyntactic features

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Tightness

• What is the maximal structural complexity allowed
  at each level of grammatical structure?

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Elfdalian vs. Swedish

• Two North Germanic languages/varieties
• Elfdalian (övdalska, älvdalska), spoken by 3000
  persons in Älvdalen, Dalarna, Sweden (endangered)
• Swedish (Central Standard), spoken by 2 mill.
  people in the Mälar Valley region (not yet
  endangered)

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Maps
Dalarna
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Segmental phonology
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Segmental phonology
iyuo eöå äa
iyuo eöå äa
gos goose
ptkbdmn?sfv??rljh
ptkbdmn?sfv??rlj
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Suprasegmental phonology
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Suprasegmental phonology
iyuo eöå äa
har du h??? have you
blot soft brott away blott soft
(neut.) wito know
h?t hate hat hat
kátten the catkàtter cats
ármin the arm àrmer arms wito wito
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Noun morphology
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Noun morphology
rattsin rakkam rakkan the dog
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Adjective morphology
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Adjective morphology
ien stur kall ienum sturum kalle
ien sturan kall a big man
ien duktin kall ie duktig kelingg Iet duktit
fuok an able man/woman/people
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Verb morphology 1
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Verb morphology 1
spilum spilið dier spilo we/you (pl.)/they play
an spiler dier spilo we/you (pl.)/they play
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Verb morphology 2
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Pronouns
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Pronouns
o enner ona she (nom/dat/acc)
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Syntax
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Syntax
Pelle kommer inte P. isnt coming att Pelle
inte kommer that P. isnt coming
Les dörum (dat.pl.)! shut the door! i Övdalim
(dat.) in Älvdalen
fast dier var inte iema although they werent
home
Kumum i kwelld. Well come tonight
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Periphrastic constructions
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Some conclusions

• On the whole, Elfdalian comes out as having the
  greater complexity on a majority of the points
  where there is a difference
• It is possible that Swedish is more complex on
  points which I have not considered in my
  investigation
• However, the burden of proof now lies on those
  who want to claim that a comparison between
  Elfdalian and Swedish lends support to the
  balancing hypothesis

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Further conclusions

• In some cases, contrary to what the balancing
  hypothesis would lead us to believe,
  morphological complexity goes together with
  syntactic complexity (agreement)

41
Language contact

• With its history and geographical position,
  Elfdalian can be expected to be a low-contact
  language relative to Swedish
• This then is compatible with the hypothesis that
  high-contact languages tend to be less complex
• but it is hardly advisable to draw conclusions
  from a single example