Linguistic Complexity

Author : Östen Dahl
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2004-08-31
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027295255

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The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity by Östen Dahl Pdf

This book studies linguistic complexity and the processes by which it arises and is maintained, focusing not so much on what one can say in a language as how it is said. Complexity is not seen as synonymous with “difficulty” but as an objective property of a system – a measure of the amount of information needed to describe or reconstruct it. Grammatical complexity is the result of historical processes often subsumed under the rubric of grammaticalization and involves what can be called mature linguistic phenomena, that is, features that take time to develop. The nature and characteristics of such processes are discussed in detail, as well as the external and internal factors that favor or disfavor stability and change in language.

Author : Christiaan Wouter Kusters
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
ISBN : STANFORD:36105112532523

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Linguistic Complexity by Christiaan Wouter Kusters Pdf

Author : Bernd Kortmann,Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2012-05-29
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9783110229226

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Linguistic Complexity by Bernd Kortmann,Benedikt Szmrecsanyi Pdf

Linguistic complexity is one of the currently most hotly debated notions in linguistics. The essays in this volume reflect the intricacies of thinking about the complexity of languages and language varieties (here: of English) in three major contact-related fields of (and schools in) linguistics: creolistics, indigenization and nativization studies (i.e. in the realm of English linguistics, the “World Englishes” community), and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research: How can we adequately assess linguistic complexity? Should we be interested in absolute complexity or rather relative complexity? What is the extent to which language contact and/or (adult) language learning might lead to morphosyntactic simplification? The authors in this volume are all leading linguists in different areas of specialization, and they were asked to elaborate on those facets of linguistic complexity which are most relevant in their area of specialization, and/or which strike them as being most intriguing. The result is a collection of papers that is unique in bringing together leading representatives of three often disjunct fields of linguistic scholarship in which linguistic complexity is seen as a dynamic and inherently variable parameter.

Author : Francesca Di Garbo ,Bruno Olsson ,Bernhard Wälchli
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 399 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-16
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783961101801

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Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II by Francesca Di Garbo ,Bruno Olsson ,Bernhard Wälchli Pdf

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. Volume two consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity. This volume is preceded by volume one, which, in addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia.

Author : Kilu Von Prince,Marcin Maria Kilarski
Publisher : Frontiers Media SA
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2022-05-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 9782889762910

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Motivations for Research on Linguistic Complexity: Methodology, Theory and Ideology by Kilu Von Prince,Marcin Maria Kilarski Pdf

Author : Francesca Di Garbo , Bruno Olsson , Bernhard Wälchli
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-16
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783961101788

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Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I by Francesca Di Garbo , Bruno Olsson , Bernhard Wälchli Pdf

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.

Author : Geoffrey Sampson,David Gil,Peter Trudgill
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2009-02-26
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191567667

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Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable by Geoffrey Sampson,David Gil,Peter Trudgill Pdf

This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred years or more the universal equality of languages has been a tenet of faith among most anthropologists and linguists. It has been frequently advanced as a corrective to the idea that some languages are at a later stage of evolution than others. It also appears to be an inevitable outcome of one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory: that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is thus identical in all languages and that whereas genes evolve languages do not. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable reopens the debate. Geoffrey Sampson's introductory chapter re-examines and clarifies the notion and theoretical importance of complexity in language, linguistics, cognitive science, and evolution. Eighteen distinguished scholars from all over the world then look at evidence gleaned from their own research in order to reconsider whether languages do or do not exhibit the same degrees and kinds of complexity. They examine data from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and social complexity and relate their findings to the causes and processes of language change. Their arguments are frequently controversial and provocative; their conclusions add up to an important challenge to conventional ideas about the nature of language. The authors write readably and accessibly with no recourse to unnecessary jargon. This fascinating book will appeal to all those interested in the interrelations between human nature, culture, and language.

Author : Claire Martinot,Tomislava Bošnjak Botica,Sonia Gerolimich,Urszula Paprocka-Piotrowska
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2019-03-04
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781119597346

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Reformulation and Acquisition of Linguistic Complexity by Claire Martinot,Tomislava Bošnjak Botica,Sonia Gerolimich,Urszula Paprocka-Piotrowska Pdf

Reformulation and Acquisition of Linguistic Complexity proposes a new answer to the question of the appropriation or acquisition of a mother tongue – a complex object, one that is both stable and perpetually evolving. This answer is based on the reformulating principle that children spontaneously apply; a principle that is illustrated here with children retelling the same story. These children are all 6, 8 or 10 years old and speak French, Italian, Croatian or Polish as a first language. This book demonstrates that the acquisition of any mother tongue is explained by the application of various reformulation procedures between source predications and reformulated predications. These procedures are comparable from one language to another, and different from one age group to another. This book also studies certain complex phenomena at the lexical and syntactical levels, and analyzes how children, depending on their age, treat these phenomena. Finally, we show that the acquisition of a mother tongue is a fundamentally linguistic activity.

Author : Matti Miestamo,Kaius Sinnemäki,Fred Karlsson
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027231044

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Language Complexity by Matti Miestamo,Kaius Sinnemäki,Fred Karlsson Pdf

Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume – a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language, held in Helsinki, August 2005 – is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory, Contact and change, Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and creolists, as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme, the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.

Author : John H. McWhorter
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781934078372

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Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity by John H. McWhorter Pdf

This series offers a wide forum for work on contact linguistics, using an integrated approach to both diachronic and synchronic manifestations of contact, ranging from social and individual aspects to structural-typological issues. Topics covered by the series include child and adult bilingualism and multilingualism, contact languages, borrowing and contact-induced typological change, code switching in conversation, societal multilingualism, bilingual language processing, and various other topics related to language contact. The series does not have a fixed theoretical orientation, and includes contributions from a variety of approaches.

Author : Àngels Massip-Bonet,Gemma Bel-Enguix,Albert Bastardas-Boada
Publisher : Springer
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2019-01-11
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783030045982

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Complexity Applications in Language and Communication Sciences by Àngels Massip-Bonet,Gemma Bel-Enguix,Albert Bastardas-Boada Pdf

This book offers insights on the study of natural language as a complex adaptive system. It discusses a new way to tackle the problem of language modeling, and provides clues on how the close relation between natural language and some biological structures can be very fruitful for science. The book examines the theoretical framework and then applies its main principles to various areas of linguistics. It discusses applications in language contact, language change, diachronic linguistics, and the potential enhancement of classical approaches to historical linguistics by means of new methodologies used in physics, biology, and agent systems theory. It shows how studying language evolution and change using computational simulations enables to integrate social structures in the evolution of language, and how this can give rise to a new way to approach sociolinguistics. Finally, it explores applications for discourse analysis, semantics and cognition.

Author : Östen Dahl
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027230811

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The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity by Östen Dahl Pdf

This book studies linguistic complexity and the processes by which it arises and is maintained, focusing not so much on what one can say in a language as how it is said. Complexity is not seen as synonymous with “difficulty” but as an objective property of a system — a measure of the amount of information needed to describe or reconstruct it. Grammatical complexity is the result of historical processes often subsumed under the rubric of grammaticalization and involves what can be called mature linguistic phenomena, that is, features that take time to develop. The nature and characteristics of such processes are discussed in detail, as well as the external and internal factors that favor or disfavor stability and change in language.

Author : Salikoko S. Mufwene,François Pellegrino,Christophe Coupé
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2017-03-30
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781107054370

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Complexity in Language by Salikoko S. Mufwene,François Pellegrino,Christophe Coupé Pdf

This book is about dynamical, social-interactional aspects of the emergence of complexity in language, explained by linguists, cognitivists, and modelers.

Author : Eric Sven Ristad
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Computers
ISBN : 0262181479

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The Language Complexity Game by Eric Sven Ristad Pdf

This work elucidates the structure and complexity of human language in terms of the mathematics of information and computation. It strengthens Chomsky's early work on the mathematics of language, with the advantages of a better understanding of language and a more precise theory of structural complexity. Ristad argues that language is the process of constructing linguistic representations from the forms produced by other cognitive modules and that this process is NP-complete. This NP-completeness is defended with a phalanx of elegant and revealing proofs that rely only on the empirical facts of linguistic knowledge and on the uncontroverted assumption that these facts generalize in a reasonable manner. For this reason, these complexity results apply to all adequate linguistic theories and are the first to do so. Eric Sven Ristad is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He is the coauthor of Computational Complexity and Natural Language. Contents:Foundation of the Investigation. Anaphora. Ellipsis. Phonology. Syntactic Agreement and Lexical Ambiguity. Philosophical Issues.

Author : G. Edward Barton,Robert C. Berwick,Eric Sven Ristad
Publisher : Bradford Books
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0262524058

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Computational Complexity and Natural Language by G. Edward Barton,Robert C. Berwick,Eric Sven Ristad Pdf

A nontechnical introduction to complexity theory: its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it can be used to study grammars.